


Hold Steady

by Roccolinde



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: 8x03 canon divergence, Angst, Bedside Vigils, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Unspoken Love, this baby can fit SO MANY TROPES
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:33:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25758151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roccolinde/pseuds/Roccolinde
Summary: The Long Night gives way to a new battle and Jaime cannot follow where his commander goes.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 106
Kudos: 269
Collections: Jaime x Brienne Fic Exchange 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [paperinik](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperinik/gifts).



> Paperinik prompted: **Brienne dies in Jaime's arms. Or almost dies, like, she's very close to death but Jaime can't be with her for some reason? IDK, just give me those dramatic feeeeeeeels! As for the ending, your choice.. does she lives in the end or not? (I feel I need to explain on this: before s8 aired, I was trying to prepare myself for every possible outcome - turns out I failed, but whatever - and when I looked for fics where Brienne dies, I could find nearly nothing at all, so it kind of stayed with me, like a what if that I want to see explored)** for the exchange, and who could resist? Heed the _author chooses not to warn_ tag--there’s references to past canon assault and the possibility of death. 
> 
> The most heartfelt thanks to those who read this in whole or in part, and held my hand through my many writerly crises. This would be a far lesser fic without you. ♥

Jaime knows, with the sort of detached certainty that comes from exhaustion and too much fear, that he won’t last much longer. He’s courted death often enough it’s a familiar face, and there is no winning. But there are worse reasons to die and he is not dead yet, and so he fights. Fights for the living and fights for his honour and fights to keep Brienne of Tarth alive for one more moment, because he can’t do anything less. And so he fights.

There is a lull, half a heartbeat, enough time to assess their situation. A new wave of wights is coming and there are not enough men. There’s a narrowing passage just inside the gates, not enough to stop the undead but a good place to make a final stand, and in the chaos she meets his eyes. She sees it too. 

“Fall back!” Brienne shouts. “Everyone, fall back!”

Jaime jerks his head, tells her silently to do the same, he’ll bring up the rear, but she shakes hers in response. Of course she does. There’s no time to argue—he falls back far enough that he can direct the men to the passageway, and the deeply detached part of him briefly wonders what she would have done if he’d argued. Wonders what it might have been like to kiss her, grimy and exhausted and ready to die but not dead yet. 

“Fall back!” she shouts again and again, her voice rising above the screaming and crashing even when she is not in his sight, and so he keeps directing, keeps fighting, until the stream of men slows to a trickle and he turns back to where he last heard her voice.

She doesn’t see the first wight.

He _runs_ towards her, sees the blade, the shock on her face, he never should have left her alone, he’s still yelling at the last men to fall back, regroup, don’t stop, but he’s moving towards Brienne and she’s killed the wight but there’s so much blood, and he’s there, he’s beside her where he should have been and how is there so much blood? 

“Jaime!” she shouts. “Fall! Back!”

He gets her arm over his shoulders, wraps his right arm around her waist, and the rest of the wights are coming, they’re nearly there, and he drags her away, he’s hacking with his sword, there’s no room for forms and elegance and grace here, just the slash and hack that might keep them alive a moment more, and she’s not fighting his help and she’s swinging her own sword, the sword he gave her, but there’s not enough strength in it, he knows her well enough for that, and the metallic tang of blood is so close it burns his nose, and her feet stumble and he _keeps dragging_ , keeps moving, because they aren’t dead yet, and then her knees buckle and he knows, he _knows_ , what she is going to say before she even opens her mouth and cuts it off.

“No, ser!” he barks, slashes another wight. “We’re almost there, almost—”

She tries. That might be the worst of it. She tries and she’s sagging in his arm and _still fucking fighting_ , because how could she do anything else, and they aren’t going to make it, there’s no way they’ll make it back to the passage, and if she goes down, she’ll be down and he’s not fucking leaving her here. There’s a wall, closer than the passage, and it’s as good a place as any to die, so he drags her there and sits her down, tells her to rest, stands in front of her, and there are other men there, because they couldn’t fall back in time or maybe they’re just as stupid as he is, but it doesn’t matter because they’ll go down fighting and maybe she’ll live a moment longer. They fight. It’s visceral and hard and it doesn’t matter because they aren’t going to live, but they aren’t dead yet, and behind him he can hear the sound of Brienne trying to get to her feet, of course she is, why would he expect anything else, it’s Brienne and she’s going to fight for as long as she breathes, and he wishes she wouldn’t; she’ll bleed out faster, not that it matters when they’ll all die in this breath or the next, but he’d like to die _first_ , craven as it is, wants to die protecting someone worth protecting, but she’s never made his life simple and so she gets up, somehow, he can hear her gasping behind him, and fuck _every single thing_ , he might die in this godsforsaken battle but he’s not dead yet, and he keeps fighting, finds the strength to keep going, another moment, another wight, he’s not dead yet. The wind screeches and whips against his face, and then—

Silence.

Absolute silence.

The wights are gone and there is absolute silence.

As if stirring back to life there is a howl of wind around the buildings, less unnatural than the last, the ragged breaths of the living. The slow scraping of metal on stone and he turns, already knowing what it is he will see. 

She’s halfway to the ground, and there is so much blood.

“You!” he barks, pointing to the nearest of the men, a northman who followed Ser Brienne into the coldest of hells without hesitation. Jaime doesn’t remember his name. “Help me get her up. Pod, go to the hall. Get a maester, or one of the healing women or _somebody_. Tell them Ser Brienne is injured and has been taken to her rooms.”

The injured are to go to the hall, but her rooms are closer.

Pod opens his mouth. “I won’t—”

“Now!” Jaime orders, striding over to Brienne’s slumped form. He spares Pod a glance as he crouches down, sees the firm set of the young man’s jaw. There isn’t time. “You think I trust anybody else to be stubborn enough to pull hands from the injured? We don’t have time—once the hall is full, nobody will leave. Go.”

He has to trust that Pod listens, because he shucks his glove to check for a pulse at Brienne’s throat—it’s there, weak and too quick, but it’s there. He lifts her right arm, gets it over his shoulder, wraps his own arm around her body, being careful of the wound; on the other side the northman is doing the same. 

“On three,” Jaime says. “Try not to jostle her.” 

The man nods.

“One. Two. Three!”

Exhausted from battle, they stumble as they rise to their feet, but they make it, and between them they manage to half-carry and half-drag Brienne, past corpses and pools of blood and damaged architecture. A feat that would not challenge Jaime another day takes all their joint concentration, and they are still too far from her chambers when they begin to stagger through every step.

“The armour,” Jaime says. “We have to…”

They do, taking turns to bear her weight while the other loosens what is within their reach. The cold metal bites against Jaime’s hand as he pulls it off, clangs against the cobblestones when it drops. The movement rouses her enough to twist, give a pained moan. 

“Stay still, wench,” he says harshly, though he doubts she hears him, “or you’ll lose the last three drops of blood in your body.”

He thinks the bleeding has slowed, but it is hard to tell in the dark and against her ruined clothing. He doesn’t have time to stop and look, so he resecures his grip at her waist and prays to gods he had long ago failed to believe in. Without armour, her sweat-soaked clothes are exposed to the air and make her shiver.

“Inside,” Jaime tells the other man, who grunts in acknowledgement and begins to move. 

They make it into the castle, and through dimly-lit corridors to Brienne’s rooms; Jaime keeps the door open with his foot as they get her inside, and from there onto the bed. She’s covered in blood and dirt and sweat and he cannot be certain, but he thinks that for all the bruises and contusions, the wounds of concern are the slice on her chest and a gash upon her upper thigh. 

“Fire,” Jaime instructs. “Then fetch water, as much as you can.” He looks her over, her normally pale skin near white. “No, see if you can find a clean shirt and trousers first, something that will fit loosely. And linens.” 

There’s a fresh blossom of blood on her shirt, and he needs something to staunch the flow until the maester arrives. Which means removing the shirt, and the wet leather laces are impervious to his attempts to unknot them. Fuck. He can’t see it well enough through the torn fabric, so he tugs them more firmly while the other man moves around the room, pulling both linens and clothes from a chest in a corner. Brienne doesn’t react as he yanks, but the bloodstain is still growing. Seven fucking hells. 

“Here,” says the man, bringing over a dagger; Jaime gives him a grateful smile and wishes he could remember his name. 

Together they manage to cut through the knot, and the man makes a murmur about going for water before Jaime unlaces the shirt. He’s absurdly grateful that the laces run the full length of it, so it is easy enough to reveal the wound. 

He is not prepared. He’s too tired to figure out how the wight’s weapon had managed to strike her ribs despite her breast plate, but it obviously did—a deep gash runs nearly the full curve of her rib, a flap of flesh and muscle barely attached. Jaime grabs some of the linen and presses it back into place, wincing when she mewls a barely-conscious protest.

“It’s no more than you deserve,” he says, brushing the lock of hair that had come loose to fall over her forehead back into place with his forearm. “I told you to fall back first.”

It’s a weak chastisement; she’d made a decision and he’d followed, not because she was his commander but because it was the right one, and these were the consequences. Keeping the linen in place with his elbow, he turned his attentions to the wound on her thigh—his golden hand is slipped beneath the waist of her breeches so he can saw at the laces there without hurting her, and he’s managed to get them partway down when Podrick and Sam Tarly arrive and he is promptly pushed aside. 

“There’s water, coming,” he says. 

Sam nods. “Boil that skin of wine,” he instructs. 

Jaime turns on his heel to do it, but Pod is a step ahead and so he’s left standing in the middle of the room, filthy and exhausted and… He sways, closes his eyes—

“Ser Jaime!” says Sam, in a tone that suggests it is not the first time. Perhaps it’s not—Podrick is at the hearth, a kettle over the fire, and beside Sam there is a pile of bloodied linens. “The door, Ser Jaime.”

He moves, finds the northman on the other side with two large pails. He grabs one, places it by the fire to warm it as best he can. The wine is boiled, somehow, and Sam is looking at Brienne’s injuries with an expression that Jaime dislikes immensely.

“You’ll need to hold her steady,” he says, his beady eyes looking at Jaime. “I have to get back to the Hall, and... “

“Brienne first.”

Sam nods. “I can clean and stitch the wounds, and leave some milk of the poppy. It should ease her, at least. A message should be sent to Lady Sansa.”

“It is only muscle,” Jaime says, making a motion with his hand to set the northman on the task.

“She’s lost quite a lot of blood, and is still bleeding. I wouldn’t—”

“Then _stop it_ ,” Jaime ordered, striding from fireplace to the bed and positioning himself near her head; he knows this well enough at least, secures her arms with his and her uninjured leg with his foot, a parody of a lover’s embrace, and gives Sam a terse nod.

She screams. It’s reedy and weak and he’s not entirely certain she is conscious, he hopes she is not conscious, but he leans down so his mouth is at her ear and implores her to _hold steady, ser, hold steady_ , and his eyes are burning, exhaustion or tears, he does not know. She screams through the cleaning of the wounds, the stitching. Falls silent as they are wrapped in bandages, and if he could not feel the pulse at her wrist as he holds her he would think her dead, but it’s there, it’s there, she’s not dead yet, it’s there, it’s—

“I must get back to the Hall,” Sam is saying. “I will leave a vial of milk of the poppy. She’s had a dose already, but…” the words he does not say echo through the room. “However much she needs.”

“Get out,” Jaime growls, his eyes on Brienne’s face, the pulse at her wrist. Even beneath the grime of battle she is pale, shockingly so, but she is breathing. He’s dimly aware of Pod escorting Sam to the door, thanking him, and then coming to the bed. 

“Let’s get her cleaned,” is all Pod says, passing Jaime a cloth and placing the bucket of now-warm water within their reach.

It is slow, both of them careful not to rouse her again, but soon the worst is wiped away and the minor scrapes and bruises have been tended, and between them they manage to dress her in clean clothing. They take turns cleaning themselves next, removing their armour and sloughing off the worst of battle, and tending to their minor injuries. 

“Sleep first, ser,” Pod says when they are done. “She keeps her bedroll in the chest. I will take the first watch.”

Jaime opens his mouth to protest, but Pod is looking at Brienne with such an aching sadness that he closes it again. Let the boy have his moment in peace, the stubborn woman will no doubt be up soon enough. 

“If she requires more milk of the poppy, no more than three drops,” Jaime says. “I don’t know how much he gave her, and…”

Podrick nods, and Jaime moves to pull Brienne’s bedroll from the chest and lays it before the fire. 

When he wakes, the fire has burnt low and Brienne is moaning. He turns and sees that Pod has fallen asleep, upright on the bed with Brienne’s hand clasped in his own. Jaime rises from the bedroll, stifling a groan as his every battle-weary muscle protests. The vial of milk of the poppy is on the table, and he grabs it on his way to the bed. 

“Up we get, ser,” he whispers, lifting her up against the pillows just enough that she will not choke. He fumbles to open the vial with one hand, tipping just enough into her parted mouth and encouraging her to swallow, hoping not to wake Pod. 

She opens her eyes, so bloody blue even in the dim light that he forgets, just a moment, where they are. But there is none of that intractable stubbornness in them, none of that certainty in honour and duty, just an absent sort of confusion that makes his chest ache and unspoken words to die on his tongue.

“Rest, Ser Brienne,” he says, and her eyes drift shut once more. 

* * *

Sam is back come the morning, exhaustion heavily lining his features as he stops by on the way to a bed for a few hours restless slumber. He’s surprised to see Brienne alive, though he hides it quickly; Podrick makes some blustering comment on how tough Brienne is from his position sitting near her head, but Jaime is… tired. Aware that ferocity alone is not enough to keep someone alive. 

“She woke up, just before dawn,” he says, scrubbing at his face. “Had some milk of the poppy and has slept since.”

Sam nods. “How did she seem?”

The absence in her eyes forces itself up from his well of memories. He has seen enough fights to know that it could mean anything; simple exhaustion or a wound to the head they had missed, or a soldier straddling the line between life and death. 

“I was quite quick, she was asleep before she was truly awake,” he says, rather than find some way to voice it. From the way Sam looks at him, he is not convinced that the lie makes a difference. “The two wounds you stitched were the only serious ones, at least. Contusions, and bruising, but nothing more than might happen in a tourney.”

Men have died in tourneys.

Sam nods and moves towards the bed, too tired to be nervous as he might have been another day. He runs a hand over Brienne’s head as Pod looks on, hesitating over a particularly nasty bruise against her cheekbone and then moving down to check on the bandaged wounds. The leg first, the stitches there holding well, and then back to her ribs. It looks no better in daylight, Jaime must admit—the skin is pale (he moves closer to the bed, lays fingers on her bare wrist and finds it pale there too, cool, but not yet dead), the wound large and angry. The blood on the linens is dark though, old blood instead of new. He’s grateful—he is not certain that she has blood enough to spare now. Sam palpitates around the wound, assessing, and Jaime’s fingers curl around Brienne’s wrist as if his touch would keep her steady—it is of little use though, for she barely stirs.

“It is better than I thought,” Sam says, when he has replaced the bandages with fresh and Brienne’s shirt has been laced tight once more. “Her breathing is steadier, I believe, and the wound does not look worse.”

No worse is not better. Jaime keeps his hand at her wrist (the pulse is thready, and quick, but it is still there, she is still there), tilts his chin high when Sam’s eyes drift to the point in question.

“I would tell you both to seek your beds,” Sam says, instead of anything else, splitting his gaze between Jaime and Podrick. “But I know a fool’s errand when I see one. I’ll make certain food and a second bedroll are sent up—Lady Sansa will wish to hear her sworn sword still breathes.”

Jaime growls, deep in his throat, before he can stop himself. Coughs, in the hopes it seems he was simply clearing his throat. 

“If she comes around again, try to encourage her to drink some water. Broth would be better. “ Sam gestures towards the vial on the nearby table. “You know how to dose the poppy?”

“We’re near enough in size,” Jaime says. “She’ll have enough to rest easily and no more.”

Sam nods. “Very well. I will come back this evening, if she—”

It’s Podrick who interrupts this time, leaping from the bed and placing a hand on Sam’s shoulder, guiding him to the door with tired thanks and promises extracted to come by earlier if he possibly can. They are almost at the door when Jaime remembers—

“My brother, Sam?”

“Lord Tyrion lives,” Sam says. “The crypts were not a wise choice, but I hear he was very brave in the defense.”

Jaime feels a smile tug at the corner of his lips. “I’m sure he was.”

Then Sam is gone, and Jaime and Podrick exchange a look in the quiet his absence brings. Jaime breaks first, turning to pull the furs back over her as Podrick moves to stoke up the fire, anything to bring some warmth to the room. For a long time the only sound is the crackle of the wood and her breathing; neither one dares to drown it out with words or actions.

The food does arrive, eventually, and a little later the second bedroll, and with it Brienne’s sword, found in the courtyard. They both manage to pick at the food, tasteless and heavy as it is; the bowl of broth they both leave untouched, and by the time they have eaten as much as their roiling stomachs can bear, the inaction has niggled at them both—they clean their swords, and hers, the armour that they had worn the night before. Jaime wonders where hers has gone, discarded somewhere enroute to her room. Still they do not speak, ears straining to hear her when she rouses. 

She doesn’t.

Time is meaningless in this room, but eventually Pod cannot hide his exhaustion. He glances towards the bed, loyal squire to the end, and Jaime takes pity.

“There’s naught to do, Pod,” he says. “She would not have you tire yourself needlessly. Get some rest.”

“No. If she needs me—”

“She needs you, but she needs you well. I’ll take the first watch this time.”

Pod nods, reluctantly, rising from the chair and setting his newly-cleaned armour aside. He moves to her bedside, fidgets with her blankets, and Jaime knows she would _hate_ it, to be fussed over so.

“If she dies…” Pod says, and his voice quavers but he doesn’t shy away. “If she dies, at least she will die a knight.”

“If she dies, I’ll take it back,” Jaime snaps. Gives up and moves the chair to her bedside. Ignores Pod’s eyes on him, soft and understanding, and studies her profile instead. “You can wake up and fight me for it, you stubborn woman. It would be the honourable thing.”

She doesn’t. Not for the title, not for the broth left cooling on the table, not even for the poppy. Pod tosses fitfully for a few hours and Jaime is left alone with his thoughts, with the occasional touch of his fingers against her wrist, her neck, to assure himself that her stillness is only a deep sleep. Replays the night before a thousand times, trying to find a way she would not have been there, a way that… it is pointless. It was the right call, to have her skill and steel guarding the retreat. These are the risks of a soldier, and he won’t—can’t—call her anything less. But he replays it again, thinking perhaps he should have been closer, or faster, should have chained himself to her so they could not be parted.

Hours pass. He doesn’t know how. Podrick is awakened by a servant coming in with fresh linen bandaging, gathering the old to boil and use again. _There are many injured, many dead_ , she says, then nods towards the bed, _but I am glad Lady Brienne is not yet among them_. The thunderous cloud that passes Jaime’s face must be fearsome indeed, because she quickly bobs a curtsy and flees the room, linens clutched to her breast. 

Sam comes around the time the evening meal is delivered. He tuts when Jaime says that Brienne has not woken up, and Podrick picks up her hand from where it is so still against the dark furs and holds it gently. He has Pod ease her upright, spoon feeds some of the now-cold broth and then some poppy so there is something in her as Jaime looks on uselessly, turns to rifle through her belongings for another clean shirt; when Sam is satisfied she has had enough he has Pod ease her down again, checks the stitches still hold. They do, even with the movement, but Sam does not look satisfied. 

“Broth if she wakes,” he repeats. “And if she doesn’t, try again in a few hours. She’s weak, she might not rouse.”

Jaime nods curtly, her last clean shirt clutched in his hand. Once Sam is gone, he and Podrick change her again, her body as limp as—he remembers Myrcella, a ship, pushes it all away. Brienne is still breathing, soft puffs of warmth against the back of his hand, and he moves to stoke the fire again. 

It is hours later still that Sansa Stark arrives, huge shadows beneath her eyes and her clothes rumpled and filthy. She strides to Brienne’s bedside, giving mind to neither Jaime nor Podrick until she has pushed the hair from Brienne’s face, clucked softly like a mother hen.

“I would have come sooner,” she says. “I ought to have come sooner. But the men….”

“Duty first,” Jaime says, in a fruitless attempt to offer her some comfort. “Ser Brienne would understand.”

“Of course,” Sansa says, sitting on the mattress and taking Brienne's hand between hers. “I will set my lady’s maid to care for her now.”

She leans down, pressing a kiss against Brienne’s brow, and Jaime _hates_ that his first instinct is to tell her to _go away, don’t touch her like I can’t, she’s mine to protect and she’s not dead yet_. It’s ridiculous, even as he thinks it he knows it is ridiculous, but he thinks it all the same. 

“I’m sure the woman is needed elsewhere,” he says. “Podrick and I are doing well enough between us.”

Sansa looks at him, too knowingly. “That is hardly appropriate for a lady, ser.”

“It is nothing we have not seen before,” he says. “She’s as much a knight as a lady. We would hardly take advantage of a brother.”

His hand flexes at the thought, wishing he could reach across the small distance between chair and bed to touch her wrist once more, assuring himself that her heart yet beats, but Sansa is there.

“There are dead to move, even after the hard work of today. Pyres to be built. Repairs to be done. Two able-bodied men are worth more than one soft-handed maid.”

Ahh, that was her purpose.

“Unfortunately, I have no hand to spare, unless the gold will do.”

She bristles, sits straighter, but before they can clash, Podrick is intervening again.

“I will be there, come morning,” he says. “But Ser Jaime ought to stay with my lady ser. He is no maester, but he has seen battle. He knows how much milk of the poppy is safe, signs she is—” The young man swallows. “That she is better, or worse. He is strong enough to lift her, when she needs to drink. He’s of much more use here than in the yards, Lady Stark. And Ser Brienne… Ser Brienne trusts him, with her life. Allow him to stay.”

There is an earnest youthfulness in his plea that takes Jaime aback, and softens the woman’s posture. She turns her attentions back to Brienne, stroking the back of her hand and then setting it gently back onto the furs.

“Very well,” she says. “I will send her to you if you need…” she stands, looks back at Brienne’s sleeping form. “Perhaps she will be awake come morning, and have preferences of her own.”

“Perhaps,” Jaime says. “Until then, I will not leave her.” 

She gives him another look, as cunning as her lady mother, and he resists the urge to snarl in response.

“See that you don’t, Ser Jaime. I would not take kindly to hearing she was alone.”

“She isn’t,” he says, in a tone meant to end the conversation.

Sansa looks at him, her head cocked slightly as she settles onto the mattress once again, and moves on to details of the battle—who had fallen and where, the rise of the dead in the crypts, that Arya Stark had dealt the killing blow against the Night King. Jaime listens as best he can, even questions how the Targaryen queen has had time to speak of marching south when there are duties here to worry for, and an exhausted and wounded army—from the firm press of Lady Sansa’s lips, she questions that herself—but the truth is that most of his attention is on the woman lying in the bed, still unmoving. In the way Sansa touches her so easily, so fondly, absently stroking hands and arms and forehead, her slender fingers careful and gentle. In the way she does not stir under these soft ministrations. His skin feels too tight on his body, itches and pulls. 

“Have you seen her armour?”

Sansa pauses in her story about the Greyjoy boy and blinks. “Pardon?”

“Her armour,” he repeats. “If you see it, send it to the blacksmith for repair. She’ll want it back, it was the best King’s Landing had to offer.”

“Ser Jaime…” Pod begins, and Jaime gets up, puts more wood on the fire, notices that the carefully piled logs are running low.

“Will you send new wood with your maid, Lady Sansa?”

She’s still _watching_ him, watching him and saying nothing, and he won’t shift under her gaze and he doesn’t like whatever it is she thinks she sees, but after a long moment she nods and stands.

“I will go now,” she says. “I will see you in the morn, Podrick.”

She presses a final kiss against Brienne’s cheek and leaves, and the silence falls once more. Firewood is delivered. Podrick stares deliberately at the bedroll near the fire, and Jaime finally crawls into it and drifts into a dreamless sleep. 

He is roused in the early hours by pained murmurs from the bed, answering words of comfort; he rolls over and peers through one eye, sees a barely conscious Brienne and Podrick with his head bowed, love and sadness warring on his face, as he helps her drink from the vial. It is intimate, intensely so, and Jaime dares not stir and intrude upon it, but he cannot quite bear to look away either.

When Podrick comes to wake him an hour later, he feigns he was asleep.

* * *

Podrick is preparing to join the post-battle efforts when Sam arrives the next day, and he finds any reason to move slowly until Jaime takes pity on the lad. 

“Help Sam,” he directs. “I must sort through all the things Lady Sansa’s maid brought this morning.”

For a moment Podrick looks every bit as young as he was the day Jaime had sent him from King’s Landing, and Jaime forestalls any undue thanks with a raised hand.

“Brienne would have my bollocks if I let you flutter around uselessly,” he says. “Don’t make me regret it.”

He rises stiffly from the chair where he had spent the last half of the night, while Podrick had stolen a few hours rest and Brienne had not made another sound. Her eyelids had fluttered once, and he’d thought she’d wake, had whispered her name (perhaps he’d known she wouldn’t, because it had been _Brienne, Brienne_ , the name he’d dared never call her when she could hear), and when she had not stirred he thought that perhaps it was a precursor for a fit and glanced around the room for a bit of leather to stick between her teeth. It had been neither; a moment later she’d fallen back into stillness, so deep he’d found her pulse at her wrist and could not pull himself away for several long minutes.

Lady Sansa’s maid had arrived just after dawn, a slight northern girl with a fearsome scowl for Jaime, carrying a basket of clean linens and clothes and food that could be eaten one handed, which had felt rather like an offering of peace from her mistress. He takes these minutes to unpack the basket, setting aside a newly laundered shirt of Brienne’s and listening to Sam’s quiet murmurs and questions of how and when Brienne had been… conscious seems too generous a word, but responsive. He prods her a bit more at Pod’s answers, prying open her eyelids with a thumb and frowning. Moves to the bandages, examining the wound and rebinding them. Then he stands, washing his hands in the small basin kept for this purpose before turning to face Jaime and Podrick. 

“Presuming corruption does not set in, she might yet live,” he says. “I am worried her movements will undo the stitches if she wakes in as much distress as Podrick mentions. There are signs of pulling as it is. I want you to dose her with the poppy four times a day, more if she gets restless. If you can manage broth at the same time…. With the blood she lost, healing will be slow. Sleep and food are the best we can do for her.”

Jaime is very tempted to ask for a better maester, one who can do more than prescribe sleep and food and hum in the back of his throat in a particularly annoying way as he decides that Brienne of Tarth might very well die instead of ensuring it does not happen, but he refrains. Some part of it must be on his face though, because Sam meets his eyes.

“All the medicines in the world will not cure what ails her, and that is not a bad thing. Better to need rest than to treat corruption or fever. I will try to come a third time a day though, if it will appease you. Many of the badly injured have died now, for there are not enough beds or time to save them all.”

From another man it might feel like a rebuke, but there’s a kindness to Sam that makes it seem—

“I am sorry,” Jaime says, genuinely contrite. “I know you do not wish her harm.”

Sam gives him a small smile. “I believe all of Winterfell would like to see her well.”

It certainly feels so, over the next few days. There is a steady stream of people who come in and out from sunrise until sundown—Lady Sansa, when she has even a moment to spare. Arya Stark, a fierce little she-wolf who spends most of an afternoon toying with the dagger she’d used to kill the Night King and watching Brienne from the corner of her eye, as if to look at her directly would be to see the truth. Tyrion comes one morning, between war councils, and his brother looks exhausted as he relates the troubles they face in the war to the south; Jaime strokes Brienne’s hand, not quite as cool as it once was, and tries not to think who is on the other side of that battle. That ginger-haired wildling comes by another day, says something about warrior women and giant babies and… Jaime thinks it is meant to be a compliment, but he finds himself glad that he is positioned between the man and Brienne, and he rises from the chair and crowds him from the room with sharp smiles and false gratitude. Men who had served under her stop by, and some of the servants, and it seems Sansa’s maid simply hovers somewhere nearby until she is needed. Podrick is still helping with the rebuilding of Winterfell, but he comes any moment he can and spends the nights by Brienne’s side; Sansa tries to encourage them both to rest in a real bed, gently badgering them about their health, but when they refuse she does not fight them and has a small camp bed delivered in its place.

The most surprising visitor, though, is Daenerys Targaryen. The self-proclaimed Queen arrives, an Unsullied commander at one shoulder and her translator at the other. She turns those unnervingly sharp eyes on Jaime instead of Brienne, and for a moment he regrets that his sword is across the room.

“You are not who I was told you were, Kingslayer.”

“My reputation is well-deserved,” he sneers. “If you’re to come for my head, I’m rather attached to it and prefer you didn’t. If you’ve come to ask my advice on the battle for King’s Landing… well, I would advise you true, but I would not trust me, in your place, and you certainly would not like what I had to say. Best to avoid that too.”

“You supported a false queen.”

“I supported a poor queen,” he corrects, “and she was not the first. Your father, the man who replaced him—it has been a long time since Westeros has had a ruler worth serving. A poor knight must do _something_.”

“You’ve found one now?”

“I do not know you well enough to say,” Jaime says, but Daenerys gestures with her head at where Brienne lies, unmoving.

“The Lady Brienne, you follow her.”

“Into the seven hells, if she asked it of me,” Jaime answers truthfully. “Though she never would.”

This seems to satisfy Daenerys, who extracts a razor, seemingly from the sleeve of her gown. 

“Tidy yourself,” she says, and gives a small smile. “Elsewise when the lady awakes, you’ll frighten her into thinking she’s discovered another bear.”

It is, quite possibly, the strangest truce of Jaime’s life, and he dares not ask how she’d even heard of that incident, but he takes it. When the Queen has left he makes his way to a small looking glass, ignoring the heavy shadows and sallow skin as he neatens the beard. 

“I’m not taking it off entirely,” he says aloud, as if to speak to Brienne. “I’d freeze my face if I dared. But I suppose I look slightly less disreputable this way.”

She doesn’t reply. She never does, and Jaime knows that is for the best but he still waits, still expects that low voice of hers to say _Ser Jaime, you really must not say such things_ or perhaps _If you must take nothing seriously, would you at least do so quietly?_ Still, he prefers these quiet moments when they are alone to the constant troupe of well-wishers; she deserves them, but they remind him all too keenly how far away she is from fine. 

Time passes. It is the fourth day, or perhaps the fifth, when he overhears two servants, speaking quietly so as not to wake him from where he has fallen into a light doze in the chair; they could hardly know that he wakes at any slight sound, a skill honed from years of use, wakes and hopes that this time it is Brienne. He opens one eye to watch them fuss over the laundry they have returned to the room.

“Lion of Lannister, my foot,” whispers one. “He’s more a churlish guard dog than such a fine beast.”

“I’ve always thought a dog has much more use than a lion,” replies the other, a smirk in her voice. “And he’s pretty enough, regardless.”

He coughs and they both jump, flushing bright red before they bob a curtsy and retreat from the room as quickly as possible.

“There you are, ser,” he says, turning to Brienne’s still frame when they are gone. “I am as much use as a hound. But as it is bad form to leash your guests, they must be grateful indeed I am determined to stay in this room and not piss on the furniture or betray their war plans to the south.”

It is nearly time for more poppy and yet there is not so much as a flutter from her, and he hates it, he’d always thought she was a still creature, determined to fade away except when her presence was required, but this… she is little more alive than the statues that line the Winterfell Crypts and he _hates_ it.

He sighs, rises from the chair to retrieve the small vial, looks over his shoulder as if he might catch her movement from the corner of his eyes, as if this were some great jape. “I’ll say one thing, Brienne. Your conversational skills have not improved since I met you.”

He returns to her bedside and lifts her up, tips the milk of the poppy between her parted lips, follows it with some broth kept in a goblet. She’s heavy and warm against him, and the sponge baths Sansa’s maid has insisted upon—she’d tried to send Jaime from the room and he’d refused, and he thought he might very well meet his death at the hands of this slip of a child until she conceded that he could stay so long as he turned his back, and as he’d had no desire to see her injuries again it had been no concession at all—the baths have not washed away the slight staleness of sweat and inaction. He fills the silence with idle prattle, less barbed than his early attempts to goad her into conversation but still familiar enough—he tells her of tourneys he fought in and battles he’d fought, of Arthur Dayne and Barristan Selmy, until the next visitor arrives.

It is Sam again, and Jaime does not think much of the way he lingers over the wound on Brienne’s thigh until the other man asks for Jaime to warm some water. The kettle has been swung over the fire before he notes the oddness, and when he turns to _look_ at the bed, there is a worried expression on Sam’s face.

“What?”

“The skin is warm. Bring the candle closer, and the water.”

Jaime does, his eyes focused on the pale stretch of her thigh, the reddened skin around the wound. Sam cleans it with the water, extracts some foul-smelling ointment from his robes and rubs it over the gash. It’s not large, not really, perhaps three fingers across, and while it had been deep into the muscle it had not… it had not bled as horribly as some did, had seemed like nothing in comparison to the injury on her ribs. Surely it was not... 

“She does not seem feverish,” Sam says, “but I would have her off the poppy, at least long enough to judge her faculties.”

“I gave her a dose, perhaps an hour or so ago.”

“Leave the next one, and the one after that if it is due before I arrive in the morn.” Sam rises. “She has survived this long, Ser Jaime. I would not be worried yet.” 

It is not a comforting thought, that _yet_ , and when Podrick returns and Jaime explains, he sees it in the younger man’s face as well. Neither takes the cot that night, and when, in the early hours of the morning she begins to rouse, calling _Jaime, Jaime, where is Jaime?_ they exchange a small look before Jaime moves from the chair to the bed and strokes the hair from her forehead, warm beneath his touch but not yet hot.

“He’s fine, ser,” he says gently, so gently, not caring how it might seem. It is only Podrick here, after all. “Everyone is well.”

Her eyes open, the first time in days, the same blue as always, but glassy and confused.

“Where is he? I promised, I promised—”

“Shh. He’s uninjured. He waits for you to get well.”

“I promised to see him safe,” she murmurs. “I promised to keep them all safe.”

Another glance exchanged with Podrick, concern that cannot be kept hidden. Her squire takes her hand, holds it tightly. 

“You did, ser,” he says fervently. “You did. We’re all safe.”

It is enough, or perhaps she is too weak to keep fighting. She stills, falls asleep once more; Jaime lets his fingers linger against her throat, feeling the rise and fall of it as she breathes, Podrick keeps her hand between his. 

“Should we…” Pod begins, looks down, drops his voice to a whisper. “Should we call Sansa and Arya? In case she wakes again and needs…”

Jaime studies Brienne, the faint sheen of sweat on her brow, hates himself for what he is about to say. 

“No,” he says, softly. “Not yet. She… she would hate for them to see her weak.”

Neither one of them sleeps. 

* * *

She has definitely grown restless by the time Lady Sansa arrives shortly after dawn, and some secret, selfish part of him is _glad_ , glad that Brienne is finally moving, even if it is this pointless shifting, at least until she makes a choked little moan and he remembers— He’s not so grateful, after that. 

“Ser Jaime, Podrick,” Sansa says, taking in the tableau before her. Jaime thinks it must seem ridiculous—a squire and a man who’d lost his honour to flank the sick bed of the truest knight, when there is no foe to fight. Perhaps she does not notice the oddness now though, for it has been days. 

“Lady Sansa.”

From the bed, Brienne groans and shifts again, and Sansa’s lips narrow. “I do hope you’ve not been remiss in your duties. Perhaps I should demand my maid take over.”

“No need,” Jaime says, rankling. “Sam wants her off the poppy.”

Sansa’s eyes brighten. “That is good news, surely?”

She hasn’t seen the absence, the confusion; Jaime forces himself to smile.

“Perhaps.”

Nodding, Sansa does not question him, just steps closer and fidgets with the furs laid over Brienne. 

“If she is well, you should join us this evening,” she says, fingers lingering over Brienne. “There’s to be a feast, to celebrate the battle.”

It feels a life ago; he hasn’t left this room since that night, has not seen the full extent of the carnage. 

“Thank you,” he says, surprised to discover he means it, “but it would be unkind, to leave her for frivolities.”

“No, of course,” Sansa says, her voice deliberately neutral, testing. “You have been her constant companion these last few days.”

“A Lannister pays his debts, surely you must remember that,” he says, the sharp smile on his face feeling out of place.

“That’s all this is, then? Brienne spoke on your behalf, and so you repay her with…” 

Sansa gestures to the room, to the chair he has spent most of his hours. Jaime has no reply, and Podrick is staring rather adamantly at the stones beneath his feet.

“No, I thought not, Ser Jaime. Podrick did not surprise me, of course, I’ve no doubt he loves Brienne as I do. You, however…”

_As I do_. Loves her well, she may mean, or as family, or a dozen other things. But none of Sansa’s observations are that they love her and he does not, and—he’d known, he’s known for a long time, years perhaps, but he has never allowed himself to…. It has never been the time, and it is hardly the time now, with her— 

“I appreciate your gracious hospitality, Lady Sansa, but I would tread carefully.”

His words carry little real bite, and Sansa gives him an understanding smile.

“Of course, Ser Jaime. I did not wish to insinuate anything untoward.”

“Not untoward,” Jaime corrects; he might not wish to say that he loves her, not to others before he can tell her, or to himself when she is unable to hear it, but he will not have it cheapened into something tawdry or secret.

Sansa nods. “If you change your mind, I shall have someone sit with her for an hour or two. It might do the men well, to see you. Your brother, in particular—there has been no peace for him, these last days.”

It is an unfair ploy, but Jaime thinks there might be sincerity there too, and so he smiles.

“I will consider it, perhaps.”

“Perhaps,” she repeats, though they both know it means he will do no such thing. 

She sits upon the bed then, and nothing more needs to be said. She cannot stay long, though she would like to—Jaime can see it in the way her touches linger, in the small twist of her lips as she watches Brienne sleeping. But there are duties to be done, and soon enough she tugs at her skirts, draws herself upward until she is the Lady of Winterfell; she very rarely is, in this room, Jaime realises, and he knows what such vulnerability must cost her.

“Allow me to walk you to the door,” he says, rising and offering her his arm.

She looks at him with such suspicion that he laughs, a startling sound; from the bed, Brienne groans, and the mirth falls away. Still, Sansa takes his arm gingerly and allows him to take her those few steps. They stop at the door, heads close. 

“I do appreciate it,” he says quietly. “The offer, and your… Thank you.”

Sansa gives a tremulous smile in return. “I am glad that you can be here, when I cannot. There are few she would trust, and you are amongst them. Whatever reasons she has… I am glad.”

Ducking her head, she releases his arm and opens the door, slips into the corridor. Jaime turns to see that Pod has taken the moment to offer Brienne some water; she’s still not awake, not properly, and perhaps it is the lingering effects of the poppy but it doesn’t feel _right_ , not with— 

He returns to the bedside, takes the goblet from Podrick so he can lower her easily. 

“I would wait for Sam,” Pod says, “but I have…” 

He gestures absently with his hand, at a loss for what to say. This part does not get easier, for either of them, but there is little that will change that. All there is left are the platitudes, the assurances. 

“You are doing your duties in her absence, she would understand,” Jaime says, and then adds, “I am sure nothing more will be said this morning. The poppy is never easy to wake from, especially after days.” 

The look Podrick gives the bed, gives _her_ , tells Jaime that neither of them quite believe it, but her squire dresses and leaves for the morning, and Jaime sinks back into the chair. In previous days there had been peace in their solitude, but it eludes him now, consumed by _as I do_ and Sam’s concern the night before and the soft and pained sounds that come from the bed. So he speaks once more, silly stories of his youth this time, the ones without Cersei for he will not bring her spectre here, and he comforts himself that Brienne seems to rest more easily as he does.

A servant has brought him breakfast and more broth for Brienne before Sam arrives, but whatever scathing comment Jaime might have made about the lateness another day is swallowed. Sam looks exhausted, truly, as he comes to sit on the bed and so Jaime stands, asks whether he will need warmed water again, is already heading towards the hearth to fill the kettle before he says yes. Turns to lean against the stones as he waits; Sam lays a wrist against Brienne’s forehead, brow furrowing, attempts to rouse her. Even asleep she mewls and shies away, jerks when he lays a hand on her sleepshirt. Jaime is across the room in an instant.

“Come on now, you stubborn creature,” he says softly, crouching down beside her. “You can’t be so craven as that. You’re perfectly safe here.”

She frowns, for all she seems barely conscious. “I promised…”

“Yes, yes,” Jaime says, brusquely, though his hand on her shoulder is gentle. “You promised to keep us all safe and you did. You’ve had most of Winterfell coming into these rooms to thank you for it, there’s no use putting up a fuss when it is only Sam.”

“Promised…” Her nose screws up this time, and he squeezes her shoulder. Wonders if he could always feel the heat of her skin through her clothes. 

“Ser, _I_ promise, everyone is safe. If you opened your eyes you would see for yourself, but you seem determined to make this difficult. Let Sam tend to your wounds, then we can argue about the rest. It has been days since you’ve last chastised me, I’m no doubt due.”

“Jaime,” she murmurs, and for a moment he’s relieved, it’s the most— “Where is Jaime?”

The look Sam gives him is _sympathetic_ , and he grits his teeth.

“Get on with it,” he spits out. “She’s clearly in pain, if you’ll take her off the poppy so suddenly you could at least do so for a purpose.”

Sam doesn’t argue, merely sets about checking the state of the gash on her ribs—it is healing well, by Jaime’s reckoning, the skin puckered and the first signs of new flesh bridging the edges of the wound making it seem smaller than it had been, that first night. He averts his eyes, lingers instead on the yellowing bruises that mar her skin as they mar his. Sam seems content as well, because he covers the wound with fresh bandaging.

“I should be able to remove the stitches in a sennight or so,” he says. “Though I’d rather not have her trust the strength of it for a moon, and then slowly.”

Jaime snorts. “If you can manage to convince her of that, you are a better man than I am.” He allows himself to smile as he looks to Brienne; it is the first Sam has spoken of days ahead. “Hear that, ser? There’s to be no fighting the Hound or executing kings for a while yet.” 

No response, but at least she is not distraught.

“I need to check her leg now, Ser Jaime, and ask her some questions,” says Sam. “She seems to respond better to your voice, can you wake her?”

The idea she would listen to him is almost laughable, but he knows Sam is right. And if he was not, Jaime would still try. 

“Wake up, Brienne,” he commands, hand reaching out to brush hair from her forehead—the skin there is hot, and his hand recoils. He remembers Sam’s furrowed brow, before… “Come on, you need to wake up.”

She shifts her head a little, murmurs, “Where’s Jaime?”

“Taken by grumkins,” Jaime says. “If you rise quickly enough, you might catch them before they eat his other hand.”

She makes a pained noise, attempts to sit up, and Jaime rises to catch her. She pushes at him weakly. “I promised—”

“It was a joke, ser,” he says, sitting on the bed to pull her closer. “Jaime is fine, you’ve kept your promises.” In this position, her brow is against his chin and he has an urge to press a soothing kiss against it, comfort her properly; but Sam is still there, still waiting, and so he sighs instead. “Wake up.”

“‘m wake,” she mutters, and struggles into a sitting position, Jaime’s hand against her back to keep her steady. Her eyes are opened, and she blinks several times, gaze unfocused. 

There is a falseness to Sam’s cheerful face that unnerves Jaime. “Pleased to see you well, Ser Brienne,” he says. “I’m going to look at that leg of yours, please try not to kick me for my troubles.”

And then he does, keeping up a steady stream of prattling nonsense, asking Brienne questions she answers, slow and muddled, her eyes drifting shut against her will. She’s exhausted, barely coherent, sagging against Jaime until she rallies again, the stubborn woman. Sam does _something_ to her leg and she yelps, her entire body tensing at the pain.

“Hold steady, ser,” Jaime orders, the words ashes on his tongue. He turns to Sam. “Can she have more poppy now?”

Sam nods, lowering the sleepshirt back over Brienne’s thighs and uncorking the vial. It’s the work of a moment to tilt her mouth open, encourage her to drink, and then Jaime helps her lie against the pillows once more. When she’s settled and he’s returned to his chair, he looks at Sam, who is fussing over a variety of jars he’d brought with him.

“The wound is showing signs of corruption,” he says. It is not a question.

Sam nods slowly. “Not a dire case, but…”

But it can turn, quickly. Jaime can remember the rotting stench from his arm, the fever, the horrid certainty he would die. 

“What will you do?”

“The ointment should be enough, if she does not get worse. Keep her under the poppy, give her broth more frequently if you can manage. Let her rest.”

It’s not enough. Surely he could… _something_. There must be something. His restless shifting must say what he does not, because Sam gathers his belongings and lays a hand on Jaime’s shoulder. 

“She is a strong woman,” he says. “It truly is much less concerning to me than the initial wounds.”

Jaime forces a smile, tells himself it is only this useless _waiting_ that unnerves him so. Not things left unsaid, not—

“Jaime?”

It is her voice, he knows it is, but there’s a plaintive weakness to it that cuts through him. He turns from Sam, takes Brienne’s hand in his. It’s hot and heavy, and he rubs his thumb against her knuckles, curls his fingers around hers.

“I’m here,” he says softly, noting the flush of fever creeping across her cheeks. “I’m here and everyone is safe. Rest now.”

Her brow unfurrows and her breathing deepens, and he is just selfish enough to imagine that it is more than the poppy taking effect. 

* * *

He touches her more that day. It’s habitual, instinctual, fingers at wrist and temple to check for fever, a palm laid against cheek or throat to soothe her distress. When he coaxes her to drink from a goblet, his thumb strokes against the scar on her lip to wipe away the droplets left behind, the skin there paper-dry. The servants shrink away from his caustic criticisms, flee the room as quickly as they can, and when that is not quickly enough he snarls and tells them to leave if they will not be of use. Sansa comes around midday, and she has clearly spoken with Sam, because her morning hope is subdued and when Jaime snaps at her she merely looks at him and continues as she was.

“You do her no good by chasing away those who might help,” she gently scolds him, when she must leave again. “Do try to keep your teeth from their throat.”

And he _would_ , he would battle every instinct he has to raise the barricades with her on the inside and prepare for siege, but she’s so restless, so pained, the fever slowly creeping up and up until she’s red and shining with sweat even as she shivers, and all the while the poppy does not do more than calm her for far too short a time as Sam looks on worriedly when he comes.

It must be near sundown when her cries change, the first sobbing “ _Lady Catelyn, I’m sorry, I’m sorry_ ” sending a shudder through him. These are ghosts he cannot chase away, and so he wipes a damp cloth against her brow instead, murmurs for her to rest and wonders when it is safe for more poppy, does not mark the passing time by the burning of the candles as she cries out for Catelyn Stark, cries out for Renly, _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I failed, I’m sorry,_ cries out in sharp keening grief. She’s had her next dose, too early perhaps but he needs to do _something_ , anything, to ease her agonies, and she is still restless, twisting, twisting, so he slips off his boots and into the bed, laying against her, his arms around her body as he whispers assurances into her ear— _you did your best, ser_ , and _rest, rest, you have kept them all safe,_ and _seven hells, woman, will you just sleep so you will be well?_ Anything but those words he cannot bring himself to say, Sansa’s, _as I do, as I do, loves her as I do_ echoing in his mind. She settles, at least a little, but her skin is burning, burning, and her body shakes and he doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t want to leave her, _shh, shh ser, it is a dream_ , it’s not a dream though, and he tries to wake her but she doesn’t, she _doesn’t_ , and he holds her steady until Podrick arrives, bearing food from the feast.

“Ser,” he says, his eyes wide, and Jaime cannot imagine what it looks like, she’s shed the furs in her sleep and she’s calmer now, not calm but _calmer_ at least, she’s not crying for a woman years dead and it is a mercy, but it must seem strange nevertheless. “I’ll fetch Sam.”

 _Thank the gods._ Jaime nods, but before Pod leaves her manages to sit up.

“Water,” he requests, his voice a whisper. “I didn’t want to… I could not leave her alone.”

Podrick nods, fetches a pitcher of water and the goblet she has used, and when he is near to the bed he looks… Jaime _knows_. The change had come on and he’d witnessed it, had grown accustomed to each progression before the next, but Pod’s wide eyes and pained expression tells him how quickly she has changed from the morning. 

_Thank you_ , he means to say, when the goblet is handed to him, as he moves her to raise it to her insensible lips, but what comes out is a ragged, “I have never told her I love her.” 

It is an absurd thing to say. 

“Of course you have, ser,” Podrick counters, earnestly loyal to the end. “Not in so many words, perhaps, but she knew.”

“I doubt it,” Jaime says. Dribbles some water into her parted mouth. “Stubborn creature would just as soon lop my head off as believe my heart, though she’d be loath to do either.”

Pod frowns. “She knew. The other night—” 

“I knighted her because there is no one more worthy, not to make some romantic declaration,” Jaime bites out. He won’t have her denied this. 

“No, but she _knew_. She would not have taken that title from anyone else by that fire. Because she knew, and she believes… she believes in you, ser. As much as you believe in her.”

“Fool,” Jaime says, lowering the goblet. It has barely been enough to wet her lips, but it is the best he can do. 

Podrick shifts where he stands. “You could— could tell her now.”

Jaime snorts, gives a resigned shake of his head. “Get Sam, Podrick. Quickly. She’s not well.”

He goes, his footsteps a heavy thud outside the door, and Jaime turns to the woman in his arms and he wants to _shake_ her, wants to shout at her that she does not get to die _now_ , first woman knight of Westeros, the truest knight, her duties are not yet done and she should _live_ , live and see the fruits of her labours, guard the Stark girls from here until old age if it would please her, but _live_ , _live, live with him if she will have him_ , _but live_ , but there is no point, she cannot hear him, the water against parched lips has roused her and she’s calling for Catelyn again, _please please no,_ and all he can do is hold her steady and murmur soothing words for lack of anything better to say.

Podrick must have run from Brienne’s quarters to the great hall and back, because in no time at all Samwell Tarly has arrived, breathing heavily, directing Podrick to boil wine as he crosses the room.

“Move her onto her back, Ser Jaime,” he directs, “and hold her steady.”

Jaime remembers the first night, holds her as he did then, but it will not be—he focuses on the crown of her head, sweat-slick, hears Sam’s hissed concern as he removes the bandage to examine her thigh. 

“I’ll need to reopen the wound,” he says, and _fuckfuckfuck_ , there’s something in his voice that tells Jaime—

“Can she have more poppy?” he asks.

“How long since her last?”

“An hour, perhaps two.”

It has barely made a difference in her state, and he knows it is too soon, too much.

“I don’t think we should wait,” says Sam. “She’ll need to be held still, so if you cannot—”

“I’ll do it,” Jaime growls, and his hands are shaking as he tightens his grip.

Perhaps it will not be so bad, perhaps the poppy will be enough—

She screams, a visceral cry from so deep in her chest that her body shakes with the effort, and he holds her down, holds her legs apart as she fights with all her diminished strength, as Sam cuts her thigh and he’s never heard a sound like this except he _has_ , years ago now, she’s a wounded, frightened animal fighting for, _shhh shhh ser, hold steady,_ she fights and she screams and his muscles are shaking trying to hold her still and from the corner of his eye he sees her thigh, sees the blood and pus, and Sam is telling him to keep her still, and she screams, screams, he can’t—she screams his name, twists, grapples for his shirt, _Jaime Jaime help me Jaime_ , and he can’t— she’s fighting and screaming and Podrick comes with the wine and he thinks it can’t get worse than this, _hold steady ser, be brave, be brave,_ and the wine is poured and

“ _Sapphires!”_

He can’t—

“Fuck off!” he roars, lashing out with his right arm to make him stop, _stop,_ just stop, please just stop; it is only that he is not wearing his hand that saves Sam from being hit, and Podrick is catching his arm and—

“If you can’t stomach it, I will have you removed,” Sam says, too calmly, and he can’t, he can’t _leave_ her, he can’t, so he’ll stomach it and he holds her down while she screams, and he cries and whispers, _go away, go away, it is almost over, just go away, I’m so sorry, I love you_ , all of it torn from his throat without regard _;_ and then she goes limp against him and his hand scrambles for her neck, gasping when he finds the pulse there, it’s wrong, too fast or too slow, he doesn’t even know, it’s wrong but it’s _there_ and it is all he can take in, _beat beat beat_ , and he lifts his eyes to where Sam is… he’s rewrapping the wound, a pile of bloodied linens beside him and maybe, maybe…

Sam gives him an exhausted smile, strained but real. Says something about cleaning the corruption away, about not needing to do this again, a diligent application of ointments and giving of medicines taking care of the rest, to keep giving her broth, that they will know more come morning; Jaime nods, taking very little of it in because her heartbeat is still beneath his fingertips and it drowns out everything else, and then Sam is gone, saying he will return in a few hours, and then it is just Jaime and Podrick and Brienne and the long wait until morning to see if she will live. 

Gods, he is exhausted, that bone-deep weariness of body and mind that comes after battle, muscles aching and head foggy. He doesn’t wish to leave her, cannot bear to, but he is so _tired_ , and Podrick looks at him.

“You’re no good to her exhausted,” he says, an echo of Jaime’s own reprimands. “I’ll take the first watch.”

Jaime goes to move, and even now, asleep or unconscious or perhaps a bit of both, Brienne whimpers and curls towards him, one hand fisted into his shirt, his name muttered insensibly, and he’ll stay, for her, cannot bear to do otherwise. Podrick gives him an exasperated look, but there is a softness too, an understanding, and it does not feel as exposing as it once did to be seen.

“Sleep there, if you must, she clearly does not mind, but sleep,” he says. “I’ll wake you in a few hours.”

So Jaime does, shifts so he is lying beside her once more, holds her in his arms, mindful of the freshly bandaged leg, and allows himself to drift off into sleep to the steady sound of her breathing, because she still lives.

He does not wake until morning. 


	2. Chapter 2

Sam arrives when dawn is no more than a hint of colour on the horizon, and Jaime hastily rises from the bed and scrubs a hand over his face—there’s a crick in his neck, from the way he’d held himself so carefully, frightened to hurt her, and it is a small price to pay. Even asleep, she seems better; she’s neither that horrifying pale she’d been the first few days nor the red flush of the fevered, and when the noise startles her awake—blue. Bright and clear, exhausted perhaps but _present_ in a way she has not been in days. 

He finds he has no words to say, or perhaps too many and none of them suitable to an audience, so he steps away from the bed, leaves Sam and Podrick to a quiet, murmured discussion; her voice joins in, hoarse and subdued, but the sound makes his body want to sag with relief. He takes a moment to wash the sleep from his face instead, then changes his shirt to one that does not smell of sweat and disease. By the time he is done she is asleep again, which Sam is quick to assure him is a good sign.

“The fever has abated and the wound looks better in only a few hours, and she seems more restful,” he says. “Let her sleep how she will, and encourage her to eat. Milk of the poppy if she needs it.”

Jaime nods. It is much the same as the days before, somehow, and he hears what is not said—she will live or she will die, and there is little he can do to influence it. He takes his seat and shares a brief and strained smile with Podrick, who has been relieved of his duties for the day, but neither of them speaks. 

She does not wake again until Sam returns just before the evening meal—Jaime rises when he comes in, moving to the fire to warm water in case it is needed, and he watches the way she stirs and struggles to sit up, waving Podrick off when he moves to help, only to give up far too quickly and collapse back against the pillows with a pained sigh. He gets only a glimpse of her face, tired and cross, before she closes her eyes and drifts off. The water isn’t needed; Sam quickly checks both wounds, applies some foul-smelling ointment before rewrapping, and says something to Podrick as he gathers his supplies. Podrick shrugs and Sam says something else, his voice low, then leaves. 

“What was that?” Jaime asks, moving back to the bedside—she’s asleep again, her breathing deep and even, perhaps the best it has been; he reaches for her wrist as he has done so many times, then hesitates, unwilling to wake her. Rubs his hand against his breeches instead, sits down.

Podrick glances at the door, shrugs. “He asked whether we’d eaten.”

Jaime grunts. They hadn’t—there’d been some porridge sent up at breakfast that they had barely had the stomach for, and nothing at midday. This is clearly unacceptable to the maester though, because a short time later a tray is delivered, accompanied by a servant who glares at them until they choke down food left from the feast the night before; Jaime feels rather like he’s been subjected to an impatient septa as the woman clucks at him, and he shovels the food in faster with no regard for how it tastes. 

Podrick offers to take first duty in a hollow voice, saying that he is not yet ready to sleep, and Jaime agrees—he’s surprised by how exhausting a day, _days_ , of doing nothing has proven to be, and he sinks onto the narrow camp bed and does his best to rest. It’s no use—he turns fruitlessly, and when he hears Pod’s soft snores, the young man’s own exhaustion catching him, he sighs and gets up. Shakes Pod’s shoulder and coaxes him towards the empty cot, takes a place on the chair again. He does not expect her to stir any time soon, and so he is surprised when there is movement from the bed only a few moments later. He turns in his seat, reaching for the poppy out of habit before realising that she is awake, looking at him.

“Ser Jaime?” she rasps.

“You’re awake.”

She grimaces, leaning onto an elbow to push herself up with a grunt, her breath heavy and her face turned away

“Do be careful,” Jaime scolds, rising to move to the bed. “Poor Sam had to stitch you back together, there were bits of you on the outside that were clearly meant to never see the light of day.”

“You exaggerate,” she retorts, but does not shake off his arm as he holds her steady and adjusts her pillow, so she is sitting upright without having to exhaust herself to do it. 

“Perhaps,” he says. There is a faint sheen of sweat on her brow at this simple exertion, a tension in the lines of her face; he raises the back of his hand against her skin, relieved that it is neither hot nor clammy, and gives her what he hopes passes for a smile. “You’ll undo his work, regardless. Would you like some water?”

“Yes, thank you.”

It is unfailingly polite, proper, and he means to tease her that the time for such formalities has surely passed, but there if a comfort in her careful composure, that whatever has happened has not changed her so fundamentally, and so he holds his tongue as he pours water into a goblet, brings it to her; her hand is shaking fiercely when she raises it, so he evades it to bring it directly to her lips.

“You’ll spill it,” he explains. “And as I’m not waking poor Podrick when he is finally sleeping, you’d have to stay in wet clothes. An invalid and a cripple won’t be managing it between them.”

She doesn’t react, and he is not certain whether it is because she fails to find him funny or if she is too— It does not matter. He focuses on the goblet, on the way her throat bobs as she swallows. There is so much he had meant to say, as the long hours had stretched in silence, but as he tilts the goblet away, she gives him a weary smile.

“What…” Her brow furrows. “I don’t…”

“You took a blow, to the ribs,” he says, turning to put the goblet down. “How it sliced your flesh and did not break them I do not know, but it might have been the only thing that saved your life.”

“I remember that,” she says, slowly. Uncertainly. “It was very cold.”

“Freezing,” he agrees. “Thankfully, little Arya Stark killed the Night King shortly after, and despite your best efforts, you failed to bleed to death before Sam could see to you.”

“Hmm.” 

Her eyes have drifted shut, and he sighs. “You should sleep again,” he says. 

“How long?”

“Days. You had a fever. Gave most of Winterfell a fright in the process.”

“And Lady Sansa?” 

Exhaustion is making her words slur, makes her fall deeper into her pillows until she is reclined, and yet still she thinks of duty.

“All the Starks still live, and fret over your bedside when they can. You lost fewer men than most. You did well, ser.”

“Hmm,” she says again, softer this time.

“Are you in pain?” he asks. “Do you need milk of the poppy?”

She shakes her head. “Tired.”

“I’d imagine so. Sleep then.”

Her breathing deepens, evens out. He has said none of the things he had meant to say, words that have no place here, but he does not regret it. There will be time, though it seems once she wakes the number of visitors increases—determined to catch any sign of returning corruption, Sam is in three or four times a day, sometimes accompanied; Sansa foregoes far too much sleep to spend more time in the room; commanders preparing to go south come to pay respects before they depart for King’s Landing. Even Bran manages to navigate the corridors to visit, though he spends far too much time for Jaime’s liking watching Jaime while Brienne sleeps. She is disoriented at first—Jaime loses count of the number of times he says _A wound, ser,_ and _Yes, all are alive_ And _You fought well, led well_ —but soon enough she remembers from one waking to the next, begins to eat on her own accord. Recovery is slow, but she _is_ growing stronger, and that is all he can bear to hope for. 

Tyrion comes, on the third night, bearing far too much wine; the army is to march south come morning, and he means to say goodbye in the way he knows best. Podrick is once more asleep on the camp bed and the truth is that Brienne seems well enough this constant vigil is probably unnecessary, but neither man can bear to end it, and Jaime knows he will be awake for a few hours yet. So he waves his brother into the room with the warning to keep his voice down, and they drink and talk and… if this will be their final parting, there are worse ones to make. 

“We could use you,” Tyrion says, when the candles are burning low. “Your insights.” 

Jaime rises, busies himself with stoking the fire and fetching new candles as he says, “Your queen would not trust me.”

“Experienced commanders are thin on the ground. She could be persuaded.”

He risks a glance towards the bed, from the corner of his eyes, his back to Tyrion, and shrugs. “No.”

“No?” Tyrion asks. “Can’t stomach facing our sister?”

“No.”

“Would your opinion change, if I told you she sent Bronn north to kill us both?”

Jaime spins sharply at that, but Tyrion seems more amused than anything as he raises his hands. “I dealt with it.”

“No,” Jaime repeats, shaking his head.

Tyrion is silent for a moment, and Jaime expects a sharp jibe, but he merely nods towards the bed.

“Ser Brienne is healing well?”

“Well enough,” Jaime says. “Leave her out of whatever this is.”

“You wound me, brother,” Tyrion says, with no sincerity. “I merely wished to know how your lady knight fares, and ask for your help.”

“I don’t think you’ve had a request that simple since you were on apron strings. Whatever plot you are making, leave Brienne out of it. She has her own concerns, even when she is healed.”

“You’re very protective of her.”

Jaime snorts—he’s spent nearly a fortnight hovering over her bedside, all of Winterfell knows this. “Ask what it is you truly want to know, or leave. I have no time for games.”

Tyrion taps his fingers against the table, seems to muse over his question though he clearly knows what it is. “Will you come south, when this is done?”

“I can hardly know that now,” he says, because however glad he is to have these moments with his brother he is still cautious, and _She’s sworn to the Stark girls_ is too much when he does not even know whether she would welcome him to stay. “Though I suppose if Cersei wins, she’ll drag me back in chains since her assassin failed. Perhaps I’d make a pretty pet.”

There is a bleakness in the humour, but he’s known—he’s known for longer than he’s allowed himself to see, that whatever love there had been in her, that frightened little girl with no mother and whispers of betrothals for she was _such a pretty creature_ , that newly-made queen whose charms and beauty meant nothing in the shadow of a dead girl... whatever love there had been in her, for him and for the world, had disappeared long ago. Now there is only power and rage and years of him feeding both; Cersei will not let it go easily.

Tyrion chuckles and raises his wine goblet in acknowledgement. “Then it is a good thing we have dragons, since we do not have you.”

“If it is of any comfort, neither does she,” Jaime says. 

His brother’s smile is small, and sad, and he says nothing, just slides from the chair and gathers his wine. 

“I am glad Ser Brienne is on the mend,” he says. “Do tell her I wished her well.”

Jaime strides over to his brother, kneels down to embrace him.

“Stay safe,” Jaime commands, emotions choking his voice.

Tyrion nods and then he is gone, and Jaime does not know if he will see either of his siblings again. He sighs, heavily, and returns to his chair.

* * *

Brienne does not, despite Jaime’s expectations, fight her orders to stay abed, and for the first sennight or so after the army leaves he is relieved. He is besieged on enough fronts as it is. Servants have decided, whether it is through impertinence or northern bluntness, to begin commenting on his constant presence, though thankfully not when Brienne is awake. Sansa Stark insinuates that, with the army gone, there are plenty of free beds in Winterfell, but Brienne still wakes in the night and requires help, so she does not press it far. Even Podrick offers to stay with Brienne while Jaime dines in the hall, and he half wonders whether it is meant to relieve _her_ of his presence, but if that is the case she is welcome to tell him herself. He has no doubt she would, if she were so inclined, and so he must presume she is not. 

He once, early on, overhears her ask Pod why Ser Jaime always seemed to be there when she woke; Jaime is just out of sight of the bed, writing—with Lady Stark’s permission—a letter to a cousin in the hopes _some_ Lannister men might kneel instead of fighting for the throne, but his quill stops as he waits for Pod’s reply.

“He carried you here, after the battle. Helped Sam…” 

It is half an answer at most, but Jaime can imagine her nod in reply, the way her chin might tremble slightly. She does not ask again, and when next she wakes she greets him as she had before; carefully, but not cruelly, and she accepts his aid with a grumbling that merely assures him that she is on the mend. She’s short with him, shorter than she can bear to be with Podrick or Sansa or the maester that has taken over now that Sam has gone south, and he greets it with cheerful aplomb.

“You’re insufferable,” she informs him, spooning stew into her mouth with a steady hand.

“If you weren’t so bloody large, a maidservant could haul you around, but until then you must make do with me. Most of the able-bodied men have headed south.”

She seems surprised, her memory is clouded still, but then she looks at him with an expression he cannot quite parse. Hesitance, perhaps. 

“I would have thought you’d have gone with them, ser.”

It stings, but he flashes her a sharp grin. “Would you rather I had? I can’t imagine either side would be eager to see me, but if you wish it I am sure I can move faster than an army and meet with them within a day, perhaps two if the weather is poor. Might even put my head on the executioner’s block myself.”

She looks unamused. “They’d insist on a trial, and you’d delay their travel a day or more. Best you stay here, then.” Placing her spoon into the bowl, she pushes it away; she’s eaten most of it, to his relief, though she has very little appetite. “Do you have the poppy?”

It is the first time she has requested it, though she has taken it when offered, and he is concerned until she gives him a wry grin.

“I need to sleep,” she says, “and the ribs itch.”

He fetches the vial and gives it to her, fingers brushing. 

“If you are asleep when the maester comes next, I will ask him if he has some sort of ointment for it,” he says. “The itching as it heals always drives me madder than the pain of the wound.”

She looks pointedly at his arm and he realises he hadn’t bothered putting on the hand that morn—after days of strange hours and stolen sleep the skin is chafed, and it is hardly as if he has use for it. He shifts it out of sight, and by the narrowing of her eyes she notices but allows it to pass unremarked.

And so it goes. She doesn’t complain, not for days. He thinks it is exhaustion, or her good nature. Thinks perhaps it is simply stubbornness turned against her body, a determination to heal faster than predicted through sheer force of will. And perhaps it is all of these things, but it is also....

He doesn’t mean to notice it. Lady Sansa’s maid—Ayla, he remembers just in time to greet her—arrives with cloth and soap to bathe Brienne in the bed as she does most days, and he happens to turn to Brienne and catches the scowl she quickly masks.

“Ayla,” he says, “there’s no need for that today. Please have a tub and water sent up in its place. Ser Brienne has lain about long enough, she needs a proper bath before the stench drives us all from the room.”

“Ser Jaime!” Brienne exclaims from the bed, but when Ayla turns to her to confirm the others she waves a hand. “Please, go. I should have mentioned it yesterday.”

The girl curtsies and leaves the room, and when she is gone Brienne _glares_ at him.

“Must you be so…”

“You were sick of being fussed over, ser. I was merely doing my duty as your defender.”

“Of yes, please do defend me from terrifying children half my size.”

“Soap can be lethal, ser.”

Another scowl. “You’re… did it occur to you that I am to stay in this bed? I do not know whether I could even make it to the tub, nevermind bathe without drowning.”

“Ayla will help you bathe.”

“And if I—”

“Swoon like a maiden fair?” Jaime asks. “You forget you saved me from such a fate once before, I’d hardly let you die in such indignity.”

“That is hardly appropriate.”

“I know. I shall turn my back or close my eyes, though I’ve seen it plenty before. I have no interest in leering over an injured brother, ser, I should like to think I have enough honour for _that._ ”

She blushes a furious shade of red, whether angered by his flippancy or simply embarrassed by his cool assessment he cannot say, but it makes her more determined. Thankfully, it makes her determined in the way that serves his own desires.

“I would hate to impugn your honour, Ser Jaime,” she says. A too long pause, a too long look. Then, softly, “Thank you. I swear I can still feel viscera in my hair. Some things cannot be resolved by cloth and water.”

He nods, then moves to fetch her a clean sleepshirt from her chest. When he turns back, her eyes are closed and she is dozing, saving her strength for the bath. They do not speak again until the tub arrives, followed by hot water, and then he briskly sets about helping her. Arm wrapped around her waist, low enough that he does not hit against her wounds. Keeps her steady as she shuffles across the room to where the copper tub sits before the fireplace, biting back the urge to tell her that the water will be cold before she gets there; he can see the frustration on her face, in the way her jaw clenches and lines appear between her eyes, in the way she sags against him by the end. Beneath his palm he can feel the sharp jut of her hip, wonders how much weight she has lost. He does not need to wonder long—when they reach the tub, Ayla is waiting. She unlaces Brienne’s sleepshirt as he holds her upright, and he sees her body, truly _sees_ it, for the first time in... too long. The bruises that have turned yellow-green and begun to fade, the pink of new scars in those scrapes and cuts that had been of no concern, those he knows, recognises on his own body. The weight she has lost, however, leaves her near gaunt; not frail—he cannot fathom her truly _frail_ —but too weak. Her ribs are still bandaged, to avoid aggravating the new skin though the maester had removed the stitches the day before, and as Ayla unwinds them all he can see is the size, the curve of the wound, remember the way he’d tried to staunch the flow of blood, hot and heavy beneath his hand. Then his eyes go down, past the hair of her cunt to where Ayla is removing the linens around her thigh—the wound there is less healed, the stitching still in place, but the new skin there is enough that she can go beneath the water. 

“Come on then,” he says, his words catching slightly in his throat. “Into the bath.”

He helps her over the side, their temples touching as he lowers her down, her body trembling with this limited amount of effort, and he wonders if he had made a mistake. Then she slips deeper into the water and gives a sigh of contentment that rushes directly to his groin, but it is the relief on her face that has him gesturing to Ayla to help her and turning away.

There’s the soft sound of sloshing, murmured conversation between the two women. She involves him from time to time, safe questions about Winterfell’s repairs and those who guard Sansa, even manages an occasional joke. He hears the exhaustion seep into her voice long before she is ready to rise, but he lets it pass. When the water eventually grows cool, Ayla chides her from the bath and Jaime turns once more—Brienne wraps her arms around his neck when he leans over, the water soaking against his shirt, and he helps her up, holds her steady as Ayla towels her dry—he keeps his eyes on the shell of her ear, the water beading there, the wet curling of her newly-washed hair, tries not to imagine the long expanses of skin below her neck, of licking the water from her small breasts. She sways a little, pulling his focus back to duty, her forehead bowing to rest against his shoulder.

He catches Ayla’s eye, encourages her to hurry, and soon enough he is bringing Brienne back to bed. She’s slower, heavier on her feet this time, but she doesn’t stop, fights for every step she can wring from her own strength, and he loves her for it. He coaxes her beneath the furs, though she is half asleep, and goes to move away. Her hand darts out to catch his arm, her eyes opening as she smiles at him, truly _smiles_ at him. 

“Thank you,” she says, her eyes drifting shut again. “Can you… can you stay here, just for a moment?”

“I have nowhere I need to be,” he replies honestly. “I can stay as long as you like.”

She is asleep before he can even finish the words. 

* * *

She heals. It is too simple a phrase to convey all that encompasses—the vast enormity of the achievement, the testament to human resilience, to her determination. He thought she would die and she lives, and it is no less remarkable because it is a story that has played out a hundred times, a thousand, after battles across Westeros and beyond.

The day after the bath incident, she waits until it is only Jaime in the room and then struggles to her feet and insists he lends her his arm, so she can walk from bed to hearth and back again. The muscles on her ribs pull and she has to pause several times, but she succeeds. And then she does it again and again, every morning and then every afternoon until he is merely walking beside her in case she wavers. Her appetite returns, and with it the gauntness fades and her complexion returns to its normal pale glow. She needs to sleep less, grows more irritable as boredom sets in. Sansa procures a cyvasse set, offers the entirety of Winterfell’s libraries for Brienne’s entertainment, but the task falls upon Jaime to provide it. He does not mind, finds that even with her churlish irritation at confinement he does not grow weary of her company as he does so many others.

It is perhaps a moon after the battle against the dead that she walks, unaccompanied, down to the Great Hall. He stays beside her, ready to offer an arm, but while her steps are slow she manages the distance. As she enters the room, it erupts into cheers and tankards banged against tables, in people rising to greet her as she heads towards the front of the room. Jaime exchanges a quiet look with Podrick and watches from the doorway as she takes her seat, embarrassed by all the attention. Lady Sansa makes a _speech_ that leaves her flushing, her head ducked low, but Jaime thinks he can see the smallest hint of a small at the corners of her mouth and he can think of no one more worthy. She has thrived here, amongst those who understand her worth.

He sits at a low table near the door, eats slowly so that he might have reason to linger in the Hall until Brienne is ready to return. Eventually she approaches, accompanied by Lady Sansa, and he can see the exhaustion in her; he stands and makes some foolish performance about offering an arm to them both, and while the look Brienne gives him is softly grateful, at least to those who know her well, it is Lady Sansa’s curious gaze that discomforts him. Still, he walks them both to Brienne’s quarters, and when Brienne goes inside Sansa keeps him back with a firm grip on his elbow.

“The quarters two doors along are free,” she says, gesturing down the corridor. “I have already had your few belongings delivered there. The ones left in Tyrion’s rooms.” 

“That is not necessary, Lady Sansa.”

The woman looks at him for a long moment, squeezes his elbow.

“Yes, it is,” she says, not unkindly; he’d rather have her derision.

He eyes the door, and Sansa sighs. “Go, for tonight. But on the morrow, you must. For her sake.”

It is, undoubtedly, the talk of Winterfell. Would be even without his reputation, though it surely does not help. He nods, once, and Sansa steps back.

“Do not worry about escorting me,” she says, smiling, “I know these halls well.”

He sees no reason to argue. When he enters Brienne’s room, she has shucked off her jerkin and is rubbing absently at her ribs through her shirt. She turns when she hears him enter, smiles; not much, but enough.

“Ser Jaime.”

_Jaime Jaime help me Jaime._ He swallows. “Ser Brienne.”

It is more of a croak than he would like, and her brow creases.

“Lady Sansa wished to speak with me,” he explains, turns to gesture to the now closed door. “She has arranged new quarters for myself and Podrick, now that you are on your feet.” 

She nods, or perhaps it is only ducking her head to focus on the laces of her trousers.

“That might be for the best,” she says quietly.

The stilted silence is broken only by the wood on the fire.

“I can still...” he begins, falters. “During the day.” He waits for her response, some sign that she would still welcome his company, but she sinks heavily onto the mattress and does not look up. He shifts on his feet. “No doubt you will be spending far less time here yourself?” 

Another nod. “Yes, of course. I spoke with Sansa, about resuming my duties. Not immediately, but... It will be good, to be useful again.”

She looks up, and he can only smile. Determined, stubborn woman. 

“I believe Lady Sansa is merely happy that you are well. She was quite concerned, you know.”

Brienne sighs heavily, closes her eyes. No doubt she is tired of hearing it. “I know.”

“You should sleep,” Jaime says. “I have some…” 

He has nothing, in truth, but she gives him a weary smile and moves beneath the furs. He takes a seat at the table, running a nail against the wood grain repeatedly long after her soft snores fill the space between them.

She sleeps deeply and wakes late the next morning, when Jaime is gathering the few things he had kept in her rooms over the past weeks. 

“Do you— would you care to finish our game, before you go?” she asks, gesturing awkwardly to the cyvasse board left out from the day before.

“I should…” He lifts the bundle of clothes in his arms, smiles apologetically. Her face changes, though he cannot put his finger on how; it is colder, perhaps, the hints of warmth he’d grown accustomed to hidden, or perhaps gone. “I can come back?” 

“Yes. It would—” Her smile appears forced. “I would like that.”

He goes to the new room, small but well-fitted, and hurries back to Brienne. She has taken the time to dress, slick her hair back as she does in Winterfell. 

“I hope you did not move the pieces,” he says teasingly, but she merely scowls.

“If you were so concerned, you ought to have put it away.”

“Apologies,” he says with a mocking bow. “I did not intend to impugn your honour.”

It is too late though. Whatever easy understanding they had, whatever bonds of fellowship he’d thought forged— none of it matters in the face of her renewed prickliness, in the way she cannot seem to meet his eyes as she takes her turn at the game, bottom lip worried between her teeth. 

It is like this for perhaps a fortnight: routines he’d thought welcomed slowly become burdensome, japes that might have earned a half-smile now earn only a scowl or a hasty retreat. Conversations come haltingly, sentences left lingering in the air, and he cannot blame her for it—he knows how it chafes, to rely on another when your body betrays you, and now she is well she can see it all too clearly. She had borne his company when necessity dictated it so, and perhaps she had even enjoyed it, but there is no longer a necessity. And she is not cruel in it, it is simply that she has a life, duties in Winterfell, and she did not choose this connection, does not choose it, and there is very little else for him.

And then a raven arrives from the south.

He’s checking the state of newly repaired battlements, not with any sort of authority but simply because it should be done, and Lady Sansa finds him. Brienne is shadowing her, she does for a few hours every day now, and there is a look of… 

Jaime bows. “Lady Stark.”

“Ser Jaime, I would wish to speak with you in my solar,” the Lady of Winterfell says, her voice steady, composed. He dislikes it immensely.

He follows them both, and when they arrive Brienne takes a seat. Sansa does not, pulling the raven’s message out and smoothing it between her fingers. 

“We have lost one of our dragons,” she says.

He’d expected news of his sister’s death, or his brother’s. Not… 

“How?”

“Euron Greyjoy, as I understand it. The siege of King’s Landing continues, but my brother writes… he writes that the Queen does not intend to be merciful in her judgement. _Your_ brother says there is no sign of a babe.”

The world drops away, then rushes in all at once; so lost in Winterfell, everything beyond its walls and the snowy expanse beyond had ceased to be real, and now it cannot be denied. All his sins, his cowardice and his sister-fucking ways, the years of blood on his hands. Few know them more than the three in this room. 

“I cannot say I am sorry for this,” Sansa continues, “but you did not deserve to hear this being spoken of in the yards without warning.”

Jaime snorts—nobody could deserve it more—and forces a smile. “Thank you, Lady Sansa. You have been a gracious host, I have not thanked you properly yet.”

“You save Ser Brienne’s life, that is more than thanks enough,” Sansa says. “Winterfell welcomes you for as long as you wish to stay.”

He doesn’t know how he manages to get through the rest of the conversation, is numb to it all as he makes his way to the small quarters Sansa had granted him. No babe. No babe and no mercy, and all the while he has done _nothing_ here, has eaten and taken his leisure and failed to remember who it is he chose to be, all those years ago. He cannot even entirely regret it; he had protected those he loved, whether or not they had deserved his protection. Punished those who stood in his way, and that he can regret. It matters little—they are choices that must be paid for, and in these times the only currency is blood.

He doesn’t wish to leave Winterfell, not even now, but he knows he cannot stay.

* * *

It is only later that he realises it is too easy. He waits until Winterfell is quiet in the early hours of the morning, then slips from his rooms and towards the stables, does not see another soul on the way. The horse is almost ready to go when there is a cough behind Jaime, and he turns to find Podrick watching him from the shadows.

“Ser Brienne said I would find you here,” he says. “I thought her mad.”

“Did she intend for you to stop me?” Jaime asks bitterly. He can’t _hurt_ Podrick, and he hopes his scathing is enough he’ll have no need to. Better to be hateful than a coward. “There’s no need—I have no intentions of using anything I have learnt in my time in Winterfell against the North, I can assure you.”

“She told me to let you go,” Podrick replies, chin tilted up as if daring Jaime to quarrel. 

“And you thought better?” 

“I wanted an explanation.”

Jaime shrugs, turns back to the saddle to fasten the saddlebags. “An explanation for what?”

“You could not be _moved_ from that room, not for weeks. And now you’re leaving without so much as a farewell.”

“Not everything must be steeped in meaning,” Jaime says. “I’m leaving Winterfell because I wish to, no more and no less.”

“Horse shit,” Pod spits.

“Does Brienne know you speak like that?”

“Not sure why you’d care if she does.”

Jaime sighs, gives the saddle a final shift. “You should have let me go.”

“Tell me why and I will.”

“What will you do?” Jaime asks, turning to the younger man. “Challenge me to a duel, perhaps, winner dictates my future?” 

_However short that may be_ , he does not add as he turns back to his horse. If he thinks on it too long, he might turn craven after all. 

“I will if I must.”

“Well, I don’t accept.” He waves his hand dismissively. “Run along.”

Podrick folds his arms, refuses to move. “I’ll raise the guards, have you sent to the cells. Perhaps Sansa Stark will keep you there until you see sense.”

“I can see perfectly well. Brienne does too, it would seem.” 

“Because she’ll let you leave?”

Jaime turns sharply. “Because she knows why I must.”

“And I do not.”

“Will you not trust her judgment?” Jaime asks, putting as much derision in the comment as he can muster; it is not as much as he would like.

“She would never ask you to stay, not if you meant to leave,” Podrick replies certainly, “but it was not my name she called in her delirium.” 

Perhaps it is that Jaime knows the man loves Brienne, or perhaps it is the bond forged in those quiet moments they were uncertain she would survive. Perhaps he is simply tired of being misunderstood and wishes for this last choice to speak for him. He leads the horse back into the stall, and motions for Pod to follow him.

The night sky is clear when they step out of the stables, and Jaime tilts his head to study the stars. The moon is but a sliver in the sky, but there is light enough to see.

“I am not a good man,” he says. “Despite what Ser Brienne believes.”

“Are you not? You saved—”

“No. I am not, perhaps, a _bad_ man, at least not entirely, but that is not the same as a good one. I like to believe that I am at least a responsible one, though, however unpleasant that may be. I have… obligations, in the south. Decisions that I must take responsibility for.”

Podrick is silent for a long moment, and then,“Walk with me. I’ll ask no more of you than this.”

Jaime does, half expecting the younger man to tell him that he had changed or to use Brienne against him, but they do not speak at all as they walk through Winterfell. After a few moments, they come upon the entrance to the Godswood, the path winding through the snow-laden trees, and Pod stops.

“If you are to be responsible, there are crimes to face here,” he says quietly. 

Jaime stares at the path for a long moment, uncertain what will be at the other end. When he glances around, Podrick is gone. _Conniving lad_ , Jaime thinks, _I doubt he learnt that from Brienne_. Still, he is not wrong, and there is a strange sort of balance in the idea he might die in Winterfell after all. 

The snow crunches beneath Jaime’s boots, his breath hanging in the air before him as he moves into the Godswood. He nearly stops when he reaches the centre—Bran Stark sits there, Sansa on one side and Brienne at the other. The Stark siblings seem to be expecting him, but Brienne’s eyes widen, and he flashes her a grin.

“Did you truly think they wanted a stroll in the middle of the night?” he asks.

“I thought you gone.” 

It is remarkable how neutral she can sound; there is no anger, no grief, no pleasure, just an observation made. Before he can needle her, provoke some reaction, Bran speaks. 

“Ser Jaime, let us speak bluntly. You came to Winterfell to keep your word, because you believed it to be right.” His tone is distant, ancient and certain, and Jaime nods—it is no secret. “But you also came expecting to die.”

His eyes fly to Brienne to see the horror she quickly masks, so painfully human, and wishes he had not wanted a reaction.

“I did not wish it,” he says.

“No, but you expected it. You believed that your debt to the Starks, to Westeros, could be paid with your death. Blood for blood.” The corners of Bran’s lips lift. “The gods are rarely so straightforward in their demands.”

Jaime scoffs, a habitual sound meant to cover the squirming discomfort in his chest. “If you mean to say I am here simply because they wished it…”

“No. You are here because of the choices you made. That night and every night since. To call it the will of the gods is merely another way to pretend that it does not matter. The man you intended to be.”

His father has been dead for years, but Jaime has heard those words, _the man you were intended to be_ , so many times that he almost misses the difference. 

“Actions now do not negate the ones before,” he argues, rather than examine it. “The things I have done—I have lied and murdered, waged an unfair war against your kin for their audacity in reclaiming their own home—”

“Ser Jaime—” Brienne interrupts, an intended defense perhaps, but is halted by Bran’s raised hand.

Bran actually laughs. “No. Those must be reckoned for, even the ones that were necessary. And I will not stop you, if you wish to take your horse and ride south to judgement there. It is your debt, and only for you to repay.”

“Then why ask me here?”

Bran shrugs. “I am merely reminding you of the vows you have kept, the ones you continue to keep. Ones dead men cannot keep.”

_Protect the innocent. Bring my children home. Be just, be brave, be honorable._ He has not always kept them, but he has cared enough to try. 

Jaime looks at Bran, the worst of his sins. Sansa, so like her lady mother in this light. Brienne, who knows even the best of him. A light dusting of snow has begun to fall, and for a moment they are ethereal, spectral witnesses to his judgement.

He kneels, draws his sword. He does not know if this was Bran’s intention, and he doubts the boy will ever say, but it is Jaime’s debt to repay. The snow soaks into the knees of his breeches, a sharp cold, but he does not mind. Not when he knows what he must do.

He lifts his sword. 

"I offer my services, Lord Stark,” he says, his voice wavering slightly. This is _madness_. “I will shield your back and keep your counsel, and give my life for yours if need be. I swear it by the Old Gods and the New." 

He keeps his eyes on Widow’s Wail, does not look up until Bran speaks the long-familiar response. "And I vow that you shall always have a place by my hearth, and meat and mead at my table, and I pledge to ask no service of you that might bring you dishonor. I swear it by the Old Gods and the New. Arise."

He rises to his feet, waits for some reaction. Bran is unreadable as always. Sansa merely takes the back of her brother’s chair and gives Jaime a small nod as she wheels the boy away, leaving only Jaime and Brienne. She is standing tall, her hand on the pommel of her sword, and watching him. Her lips part, close, part again.

“I am glad you chose to stay, ser,” she finally says, her gaze at her feet.

“It must be a great assurance you did not vouch for a coward.”

She looks up at that, and even in the dim light the sincerity in her eyes, in the slight tremble of her chin lances through him.

“It would not have been less honorable if you had ridden south, Ser Jaime. Not if you truly believed that was how your debt was to be paid. But I believe Bran might be right—it is not your death you owed, but your life. And I am glad, regardless.” 

Before he can reply—for how _could_ he?—she bows stiffly and follows the path Sansa and Bran had taken, and he watches until she is out of sight before heading back towards the stables. He will not ride tonight.

* * *

For the next fortnight, Jaime is occupied with finding his feet in this absurd new arrangement, but he finds that he does not regret it either. Not when there are whispers that fall silent as he enters a room, not when Bran sets him on ridiculous tasks that Jaime eventually realises are a source of amusement for the boy. He cannot even regret it as he and Brienne work together, their duties overlapping—there is a simmering sense of _something_ that prickles at his skin every time they are in the same room, dangerous as a sleeping dragon, but he dances up against the line anyway, testing it with jokes and questions and never quite prepared for it to bite. 

And then one day it does.

There’s nothing remarkable about that morning, other than they have both been sent beyond Winterfell’s walls in search of game; the castle’s supplies are well-stocked, Lady Sansa is more than competent on this front, but a fresh stag from time to time is more than welcomed, and apparently it is—despite Brienne’s protests that neither of them are particularly skilled hunters—their turn. She is particularly cagey as they ride out shortly after dawn, churlishly refusing even his kindest attempts at conversation.

“If you found my presence so unbearable, you ought to have said something before we both found ourselves bound to the north for the foreseeable future,” he finally snaps, when she has ignored yet another overture at discussion.

She halts her horse, dismounting quickly and securing the reins to a low-hanging branch. Then she begins to pace in a circle, from the tree to a boulder a little away to another tree. He watches her, keeping his own mount steady as she moves; she’s furious, he can read that well enough, but cannot tell why. When her ire shows no signs of abating, he slides from his own horse and hitches it next to hers, then moves into her path; so focused on her pacing, she stops just short of colliding with him. This close he can see the way the winter sunlight plays on her pale lashes.

“Ser Brienne,” he begins, meaning to apologise, but she shakes her head and steps back.

“I didn’t know, that night,” she says. “It was poorly done, to spring it upon you like that. If you wished—” her jaw clenches, “if you wished to ride south now, I would not stop you. I have some food, and coins, enough to see you to King’s Landing.”

If her words are a slap, the uncertainty on her face is a hundred times worse.

“Why?” is all he can think to ask.

“I believe Lady Sansa was so insistent because of… what you did for me. And I would not—I would never…”

“You believe I regret it,” he says, chest tightening when she gives a small, controlled nod. “Brienne, I _offered_. I was not tricked, or coerced, or manipulated. I gave my word freely, because this is where I believe I should be, where I _choose_ to be.”

“Oh.” 

It is so quiet a word he almost fails to hear it, but there is no missing the raw, undefinable emotion on her face. He steps closer, tilting his head back to better meet her eyes. 

“We were… our fates were entwined for so long, from the cradle really, that I—I would have gone south. To save her, though it is an impossible thing, or to stand with her, because it is my duty, perhaps the first I was ever entrusted with, but also because it did not occur to me that I could _not_. That facing all those things I did for Cersei, to protect her or please her even long after any true affection had died, did not mean having to be at her side. Her sins are not mine, and mine are not hers, and…” 

He means to say something else, about how love and hate and loyalty are so tangled together in the Lannister line, how he’d finally come to see it and wish for something different ( _you_ , he would not say), but she kisses him.

Brienne of Tarth kisses him.

It’s quick and awkward, with her lips pressed tight against her teeth and him so unprepared, and it is more a collision of mouths than any expression of emotion, none of that desperation or sweetness or longing he’d imagined, but it is real. Real, and over too soon, for she quickly pulls away, face bright red and her body stiff.

“Your sins are your own,” she says, her attempts at authoritative undermined by the way her low voice trembles, “but so is your honour.”

She looks as if she wishes the ground would swallow her whole, while equally certain in the truth of her words, and so Jaime does the only thing he can.

“Did you just _kiss_ me, ser?” he asks, trying to hide his elation behind a cutting smile.

She squares her shoulders further, a feat he would have thought impossible until she does it.

“I did.”

“Ahh. So you did not trip and fall upon my lips?”

“No.”

“You did not mistake me for that Wildling fellow who is so fond of you?”

She goes _redder_. “No.” 

“And it was not a maidenly kindness before my inevitable death?”

“If you do not fall silent, _I_ will run you through with my sword and claim it a hunting accident,” she grits out. “But no.”

“Hmmm,” Jaime says, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. “Then I suppose the only question left is what we are to do about it.”

“Do?”

“Yes. Do you suppose Winterfell has a septon?”

He means it half in jest, not because he’s insincere but because she would have to be mad to accept, to even _consider_ binding herself to him in such a way, but as he says it he realises he _would_. He wants to claim her in front of a septon that very moment, vow himself to her, be her husband. 

“He went south with the army,” Brienne says dryly.

“Pity,” Jaime replies.

He means to laugh it off, play it as a jape, but she is _looking_ at him with that sharp, cut-glass gaze and tilted chin.

Then she says, “There is the Godswood.”

She’d always been the braver of them, but he is no coward.

“An hour past dark, then?”

“If you jest, ser…” she says, so resolute even in this.

He reaches for her, catches her elbow and draws her nearer. Slides his hand up the rough wool of her cloak to her throat, strokes the pulsepoint there with his thumb, tilts his head back to better meet her eyes.

“An hour past dark. Bring who you will, and Stranger cut me down if I am not there first.” Her pulse beneath his thumb is rapid and strong, and she gives a tiny nod. “We should return to Winterfell,” he says, dropping his hand away; he already misses her warmth. “There will be no deer today.”

* * *

He is there first, though it is a close run thing. Bran Stark is to stand for Jaime—his lips twist in particular amusement when he offers, but he is sincere—and Podrick is to give Brienne away, the closest to a male relative she has in Winterfell. Sansa Stark had hastily embroidered cloaks, and if the Lannister lion is rather more haphazardly stitched than Lannisters are accustomed to, he has no right to complain. Mostly he is grateful that none of them have tried to talk Brienne out of it, or if they _had_ had done so with the grace to say it only in private. Still, he is outside the Godswood when Brienne arrives and it is worth it for the tiny smile she gives him.

“I would have wed you either way,” she says, quietly.

She’s looking particularly lovely, which is to say precisely like herself, and he takes her hand and raises it to his lips, biting back a smile when she seems more annoyed than charmed by his romantic notions. “I made a promise, my lady ser.”

“That is what Podrick calls me.”

He grimaces before he can stop himself and she _laughs_ , so he kisses her hand again and then lets it go. 

“Ser Brienne, I look forward to meeting you beneath the heart tree. Presuming you do not regain your good judgment and flee.”

She doesn’t. He heads into the Godswood, the waxing moon illuminating his path, and Sansa brings Bran shortly after, the both of them bearing lanterns. Brienne and Podrick are only a few moments later, and Jaime tries not to laugh that Brienne is clearly leading _Pod_ and not the other way around, but the boy executes his role with aplomb and steps back. There are some words, his hand in hers, a moment to kneel upon the snow-covered ground as he had only weeks before, cloaks exchanged—she takes his though he fumbles, and surprises him by placing hers over his shoulders.

_For the cold_ , she mouths, though it feels like more than that. He takes her hand again, though it isn’t required, and that is it—the northerners may live in a frozen hell, but they understand the impatience of an eager groom well enough, and they are wed.

There ought to be a feast, by tradition, but Brienne claims lingering exhaustion and Lady Sansa claims rationed supplies, and soon enough Jaime and Brienne are sent to her chambers with instructions to rest and the promise of a meal delivered. They slip hand-in-hand from the Godswood and towards the castle, and when they meet the first servant Jaime stops short, though he keeps his grip on Brienne. The servant bows and goes to speak to Brienne, but she interrupts them with firm kindness.

“You must excuse us,” she says, casting a glance back at Jaime and for a moment he waits for the inevitable lie to obscure their connection, but that is not her way, “my husband and I have dinner waiting in our chambers.”

_Husband._ Her face splits into a smile on the word, and Jaime squeezes her fingers, and they practically flee further into the castle. 

They are near giddy when they reach her rooms, drunk on the string of felicitations granted to them and the simple truth that she can call him husband and he can call her wife, and if the route here has been strange then it is no less true and honest and good. And then they are safe inside her private chambers and his hand tangles in her hair as he leans up to kiss her; he means for it to be a gentle one, but she’s eager, awkward in her return, their lips colliding, pulling back, trying again.

“Jaime—”

“Oh, thank the gods,” he laughs. “I had half a thought you might still call me Ser Jaime in our marital bed.” She blushes slightly and glances away, and he rises upon his toes to murmur against her ear, “Another night, perhaps, _Ser_ Brienne.”

She exhales and pulls away, a half step and no more.

“Jaime, we should eat,” she says. There is a tray of food upon the table, meats and cheeses and a carafe of Dornish red, all things easily eaten now or some later time, and no doubt precious commodities in Winterfell’s stores. 

“Allow me to remove your cloak, at least,” he says. “It’s far too hot in here.”

He really does mean to only remove her cloak, perhaps give a compliment to Lady Sansa’s quick embroidery, but as he turns to set it aside Brienne unlaces her jerkin and removes it as well so she is left in only a fine linen shirt; in the firelight he can see the silhouette of her body beneath it. And then her fingers reach for the laces of the shirt even as she watches him, a quiet certainty in her movements that leaves him speechless. 

She allows the shirt to slide off her shoulders, and waits. 

For a moment he does not move, transfixed by her body—the breadth of her shoulders, the rise and fall of her chest, the scars new and old. The luminescence of her pale skin, so different from the chalky pallor of—but he will not think of that and removes his own cloak and jacket and shirt instead, an offering that makes her eyes widen though she does not look away. 

He steps closer, bodies aligning, kisses along her neck, her jaw, slow and sweet, the skin soft and her pulse thudding beneath it. His hand slides up her back, feeling the shape of her—bone and muscles moving as she touches him back, carefully at first as if she does not know whether it is welcome, or perhaps that she does not know how, but then more firmly, a hand pressed between his shoulder blades drawing him closer, skin against skin. She stumbles a bit against him, her knees sagging when his kisses reach her mouth, and he chuckles.

“Do you truly wish to eat?” he asks.

She shakes her head, seeks his mouth again. “Not yet.”

“Good,” he groans, “then it will keep.”

She leads him to the bed, sits on the edge, pulls him down with her.

“I have never….” Her hands flutter, and she gives a wry smile.

“Nor I,” he says, which feels utterly ridiculous but also true.

“I have been told it will hurt.”

His hand comes to span across the scar on her ribs, the texture of it beneath his palm reminding him that what was once a bleeding wound is now solid flesh, a reassurance of her courage. They kiss again and again, finding what pleases them both, until they are near breathless with it, until her hand on his lap cups a hardened cock, until her beautiful eyes are dark with want. 

“Do you… please yourself, Brienne?” he asks. “Touch yourself in the dark of the night until you feel the most exquisite agony?”

She firms her jaw. “What of it?”

A smile slashes across his face, and he encourages her to lie against the pillows. Peels her breeches from her legs and kisses his way down her body until he is between her thighs; he parts the lips of her cunt, blonde curls and pink flesh, traces the lines and curves of it with the gentlest stroke of his finger.

“Show me,” he demands, or intends to—it comes as more of a plea.

She flushes furiously, a mottled pattern from face to sternum, but her hand slips down and she strokes herself, cautiously at first, then a little firmer, a little faster until the scent, the sight of her arousal makes him groan.

“May I kiss you?” he asks, and she nods.

He’s slow, a swipe of his tongue and then a pause to see her reaction, a press of his lips to judge the pressure. She keens when he finds his rhythm, writhes and gasps beneath his tongue, the earthy tang of her filling his senses, the muscles of her thighs trembling as she arches, cries out, her fingers curled in his hair, and then she is pulling him up, up, to her mouth, her free hand sliding between them—he feels the tug of his laces, then her fingers slipping beneath the waist to pull it down, her hand wrapping around his cock. 

“It’s soft,” she says, which makes him laugh.

“I can assure you it is not.”

“Not—” she presses a kiss against the corner of his mouth. “The skin, it’s _soft_.” One of her fingers unfurls, strokes him as tenderly as he had her; he shifts his weight so he can lift his hand, lay it over hers. 

“Unpleasant?” she asks, her brow furrowing slightly.

“Too pleasant,” he says with a shake of his head. “Not yet.”

She looks perturbed but does not quarrel, merely loosens her grasp and pulls him close. They kiss and they touch and he draws another sweet climax from her with careful fingers in her cunt, his mouth on her breasts, watches her eyes go glassy and her body relax, and it would be enough, just this, but she’s soon wanton and open beneath him, _please please please Jaime_. He’s cradled in her hips and he taps one of her thighs, encouraging her legs wider. Looks down, drinks her in—rumpled hair and pink skin and the tip of her tongue darting out to wet her lips, gloriously alive, gloriously here, and he could stay here forever except she’s touching him, a finger along his nose, his jaw, down his throat and across his shoulders. Kisses him, pulls him closer and he eases himself inside, carefully, carefully, while she moves against him, urges him deeper with the cant of her hips, the clench of her cunt. She’s hot and wet and vibrating with laughter.

“Your face, ser,” she says, so he moves in, out, once, twice, slowly, slowly until… “Fuck, Jaime,” she exhales, all at once, fingers scrambling against his hips, “I won’t shatter.”

She could, she’s flesh and bone and as fallible as anyone, but she’s also here beneath him, meeting him with all the strength of her body and courage of her heart, and he loves her, peppers the words with soft kisses against her cheek, her mouth as he shifts their bodies, and then…

She gasps at the first sharp thrust, her mouth falling open as her neck arches, fingertips digging against his flesh, demanding _again, again_ , grunts and sighs and the stuttered, halting rhythm as they learn these steps, pleasure curling tighter and tighter and her hands, her words, her _love_ determined to draw it from him; it is a strange thing, fragile and not-quite-new, and he resists it instinctually, he should please _her_ first, should love her until she shatters around him and only follow her over, but her hand comes to rest on his cheek and she says it, rough and certain, _I love you Jaime_ , no caveat, no doubt, and he is gone.

After, he is exhausted but does not want to sleep, is sated but greedy for more. His thumb strokes the scar on her ribs, raised and red and smooth to the touch.

“Does it hurt?” he asks; they do, sometimes, ache or itch or pull long after the healing is done.

She shakes her head. “No more than expected.”

He kisses it all the same, from one end of the curve to the other and back again, then nestles his cheek against her chest. Her heart beats steadily in his ear and she runs her fingers through his hair, and there is nothing else to say, long into the night. 

* * *

His marriage grants Jaime a place in Winterfell he otherwise would be denied; his swearing to Bran Stark had been met with suspicion, but it is much harder to be cynical when faced with Brienne’s solemn belief that he is a man worth wedding _now_ , not at some later, nebulous date. After that first night she rarely touches him outside her chambers—their chambers now, his belongings delivered to the door the morning after their wedding with no ceremony—but it is only her natural reserve, her quiet self-sufficiency and need for authority, and not a denial of _him_ , of what they share. More than once he catches a tiny smile, a ducked head, the words _my husband_ as they go about their separate duties.

When the raven comes—two queens dead, a city burnt—there is very little time to feel _anything,_ for both the Stark children still in Winterfell have been requested in King’s Landing, and Jaime and Brienne are set on the task of preparing to travel the following morning. There are provisions and routes to account for, dangers to assess, and if it is easier to lose himself in arrangements than to wonder whether Cersei had wished for him in the end, whether she had seen her folly, then nobody thinks to judge him for it.

Still, when he comes to bed that night, the unfathomableness of the truth strikes him—his twin is dead and he is not: he will never need fear she will harm those he loves out of spite, but some of his own history is gone too, crushed beneath rubble, the truth left nowhere but his own fallible memory. He will never need to save her again, but he must live with the knowledge that he never could. Grief feels an odd word for the roiling emotions; it is guilt and anger and sadness and relief, a burden he has long grown accustomed to bearing but feels the weight of all the same.

“Tell me of her,” his wife whispers into the dark, her steady arms cradling him as he has once cradled her, a comfort and a plea not to disappear in equal measure.

He does. Small things at first, stories of their childhood and silly court intrigues, but more and more until his voice and his heart are both hoarse with the hurt and he wants only to sleep. Brienne kisses the back of his neck and pulls the furs around them tighter; he will tell her the rest another day, or perhaps he won’t, they are his memories to do with what he will and she will love him regardless.

When the morning comes, the sunlight brightens a clear sky and they part with hurried kisses; he does not see her again until they are both in the courtyard and the retinue is almost ready to leave. 

“Hold steady, ser,” says Bran from beside him when she rides into sight, and Jaime would throttle the little horror if not for the sly smile the young man gives him; he turns to watch his wife instead.

She is a steady pillar atop her mount, her repaired armour shining blue even at a distance; he watches her for a moment, the quiet confidence in her words as she confers with Sansa, issues commands, and then she sees him. Smiling, she finishes her conversation and rides over.

“Ser Brienne,” he says.

“Ser Jaime.” She inclines her head. “You will ride with me?”

They will not always be together—there will be battles they cannot be side by side, duties that will demand the attention of one but not both—but whatever their duties, whatever future King’s Landing holds for them, there is only one answer. 

“Always,” he says.

After all, they are not dead yet.


End file.
